The EU Better Regulation agenda: state of play 2021

Following reform in 2015, the EU’s Better Regulation agenda – designed to improve the quality of regulations adopted by the Union institutions – was put at ‘the heart of the Commission’s work’ at the end of 2019. President Ursula von der Leyen introduced the EU’s first one-in-one-out rule for regulatory governance, linked Better Regulation to the Commission’s new Strategic Foresight initiative and pledged to publish a communication outlining how the existing instruments would be developed. Originally planned for May 2020, the latter is now scheduled for release in March 2021 and progress on President von der Leyen’s Better Regulation objectives is unclear. This paper reviews the current ‘state of play’ of the EU’s Better Regulation agenda. It explores, in particular, (1) the effort to encourage the adoption of Better Regulation policies in other EU institutions, namely the Parliament and the Council, in the 2015 reforms, and (2) the creation of the new Fit for Future platform in 2019, and its impact upon interest representation in the regulatory review process. Reflecting on these developments, the paper asks which actors are empowered by the current Better Regulation agenda and what this means for the politicisation of regulatory review.