EU Aims For Better Regulation EU Aims For Better Regulation
October saw LightingEurope call upon EU institutions to pursue their Better Regulation Agenda Brussels.  Commissioner-designates presented their vision and objectives for their portfolios to... EU Aims For Better Regulation

October saw LightingEurope call upon EU institutions to pursue their Better Regulation Agenda Brussels.  Commissioner-designates presented their vision and objectives for their portfolios to the members of the European Parliament.  LightingEurope were in attendance following the debates with great interest.  Their role is to engage with this legislature to promote a positive business and regulatory environment that fosters fair competition and growth for Europe’s industry and ensures that EU citizens can access efficient lighting that benefits human comfort, safety and well-being, and the environment.

LightingEurope believes, in particular, that the Better Regulation agenda, which was initiated during the last legislature, should be further pursued, based on the following key principles:

▪ Existing EU legislation should be properly enforced before new rules are created: – The extent to which the legislation has properly been enforced should be an important consideration during the fitness check of policies, to understand if the legislation has achieved its objectives and if new rules are needed. – To achieve this goal, it is important that national market surveillance authorities also have sufficient resources available to enforce EU rules, before new ones are established. – LightingEurope supports the “one in, one out” principle proposed by the incoming Commission. The EU has amassed a very sizeable and very complex body of rules. We ask that the objective of this new legislature is on reducing the quantity of new rules and focusing on supporting compliance and enforcement.

▪ Should new rules be deemed necessary, they must: – be evidence-based, with a detailed assessment of their added value, cost to apply and enforce. – be simple and easy to understand, apply and enforce – be consistent with existing legislation to avoid contradictions and overregulation – consider the pace of innovation

▪ Impact assessments are an essential part of the decision-making process, it is important that they: – are made public during the legislative process rather that once the final law has been published. The co-legislators need to take the expected impact of rules into account when deciding on new rules. – consider the impact on all relevant stakeholders. Additional impact assessments should be carried out during the co-decision process and where new requirements arise, to ensure consistency with the original goal of the proposed legislation.

▪ Stakeholders should be invited to contribute during the process, for instance, via public consultations. Questionnaires should be drafted in a way that all stakeholders potentially impacted can respond and should be open for a minimum of 12 weeks. Responses should be weighed with feedback from associations representing multiple stakeholders given more weight than individual responses.

Trends in Lighting aims to provide all the latest news for regulation and standard updates across Europe. We invite your feedback and opinion, please contact editors@trends.lighting to provide your stance on regulation and be featured here.

LightingEurope is the voice of the lighting industry, based in Brussels and representing 34 companies and national associations. Together these members account for over 1,000 European companies, a majority of which are small or medium-sized. They represent a total European workforce of over 100,000 people and an annual turnover exceeding 20 billion euros. LightingEurope is committed to promoting efficient lighting that benefits human comfort, safety and well-being, and the environment. LightingEurope advocates a positive business and regulatory environment to foster fair competition and growth for the European lighting industry.

www.lightingeurope.org

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