Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 25 March 2026
18. Deputy Paula Butterly asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade for an update on his work with EU partners in eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy in EU directives and regulations aimed at facilitating business operations. [13199/26]
View answerI would like to thank the Deputy for their question.
The Government strongly supports the EU’s competitiveness agenda. Simplification is a key enabler of this. Both the Letta and Draghi reports underlined the need to reduce the regulatory and administrative burden on EU companies, particularly SMEs.
The Government’s position has been consistent. Simplification has to be about better regulation, not deregulation, and should deliver outcomes that serve both business and consumers effectively. We need to focus on reducing the regulatory burden, while maintaining high ambition in terms of environmental protection, human health, and other standards.
At the EU level, we need to prioritise smarter, simpler and more streamlined regulations, in line with core better regulation principles and the inter-institutional agreement on better law-making, but with a sharper focus on outcomes.
Ireland continues to engage proactively in discussions on the EU’s simplification agenda and we welcome progress to date. The European Commission has so far tabled ten Omnibus packages covering a range of policy areas; sustainability reporting and due diligence (Omnibus I), InvestEU (Omnibus II), Common Agricultural Policy (Omnibus III), Small mid-caps, digitalisation and common specifications and battery due diligence (Omnibus IV), defence readiness (Omnibus V), chemicals (Omnibus VI), digital (Omnibus VII), environment (Omnibus VIII), automotive (Omnibus IX) and food and feed safety (Omnibus X). The Commission estimates that these ten packages will together lead to a reduction in annual administrative costs of approximately €12 billion a year.
The European Commission’s work programme for 2026 was published in October last year and sets out the proposals to be tabled by the Commission this year, and which Ireland will steer during our Presidency. This includes simplification Omnibus packages on taxation, energy products legislation, and citizens. It is possible that further simplification packages could also be tabled by the Commission in other areas.
Each simplification Omnibus package usually contains several legislative proposals relevant to multiple Government Departments. My Department has been coordinating Ireland’s approach across Government to these packages and we will continue to do so to ensure the EU’s simplification agenda can deliver for businesses and consumers across Ireland.
The simplification agenda will be an important priority for the Government during our Presidency. We need continued momentum in this area and we will work at pace to agree all outstanding simplification Omnibus packages by the end of our Presidency, though this will, of course, require the cooperation of other Member States as well as the European Parliament.
