EU: Over 60 CSOs call for protection of evidence-based, transparent & participatory lawmaking as Better Regulation rules are undergoing revision
"CSO open letter: Better Regulation for everyone", 9 February 2026
We welcome the European Commission’s intention to make EU policymaking smarter, more effective and more responsive to today’s challenges. But we are concerned about the direction a revision of the Better Regulation framework may take. Expediency and efficiency can not come at the cost of democratic values, fundamental rights and evidence-based policymaking. The goal must be to enable regulation that helps address challenges to humankind, that is timely, effective, efficient, fair and proportionate, as well as participatory, transparent and duly evidence-based. This means that evidence-based decision-making should never be foregone, and neither should democratic participation, so that EU laws always reflect the complexity of reality and the multiplicity of stakeholders affected, while also being future-oriented...
The European Ombudsman’s finding of maladministration in relation to Omnibus I should be understood as a warning signal. It points to the need for targeted improvements in the application and guidance of the Better Regulation guidelines – not lowering standards. Using Better Regulation reform to weaken consultation or impact-assessment requirements would increase legal uncertainty, expose EU decisions to legal challenges, and ultimately undermine the quality and implementability of EU law. Involvement in setting regulations is not just about being heard; it is also about helping all sectors of society prepare for the future and furthers, rather than hinders, European innovation.
The Commission committed itself to upholding dialogue with civil society and respecting related principles in its Civil Society Strategy; this needs to be implemented through clear procedures under the Better Regulation guidelines. The revision of the Better Regulation framework must implement the 10 guiding principles for dialogue with civil society, as outlined in the Civil Society Strategy (p. 6) through the development of ad hoc guidelines...
All EU policymaking should integrate the precautionary principle (Article 191 TFEU), the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the ‘Do no harm’ principle in all its policies, and impact assessments should have these principles and goals at their core. Impact assessments are supposedly value-neutral, but in practice have long been criticised for giving more prominence to the (easier-to-quantify, short-term) estimates of compliance cost than the (more diffuse and long-term) benefits to people, nature, and the environment - the result is a bias in how the regulatory burden is calculated. A revision of the Better Regulation framework should address these methodological shortcomings...
The Commission is reminded that better regulation does not mean less regulation (nor deregulation). This proposed revision of the Better Regulation framework seems focused on “reducing regulatory burdens” on economic actors. We caution against the capture of the word ‘burden’ in this context as a replacement for the narrow economic and administrative burdens of industrial operators... Short-term and quantifiable business compliance costs should not be prioritised over longer-term societal and environmental benefits; the Commission should review its framing and differentiate between “burdens” and legitimate responsibilities of certain actors in society.