Eric Van den Abeele

Policy recommendations The costs and burdens that go hand-in-hand with legislation (taxes and charges, monitoring and evaluation reports, statistics, labelling, etc.) are an intrinsic part of the democratic system. If they are abolished, this should be on the basis of a case-by-case assessment, not a bookkeeping approach. Regulatory power, the new... Find out more

The aim of this research paper is to review the recent emergence on the European scene of the concept of open strategic autonomy and the consequences it may have for EU action. Originally stemming from the language of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and the common security and defence policy (CSDP), strategic autonomy now seems to... Find out more

The issue of burden and cost reduction, both regulatory and administrative, has become a leitmotif that regularly appears at the table of the European Council. In this respect, the "one in, one out" regulatory compensation system, which consists of replacing any new cost linked to a legislative initiative with the removal of an existing one, is a... Find out more

This report critically examines progress on the European Union’s ‘Better Regulation Agenda’. Although originally intended to simplify the EU’s legislation and improve its quality, there are suspicions that the Agenda has been hijacked to be used as a tool to make companies more competitive. The author argues that this risks further fueling... Find out more