European Commission proposes regulatory relief for mid-sized businesses

Business

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Medium-sized companies are to be exempted from several EU requirements, according to a proposal by the European Commission.

Among other things, this concerns exemptions under the General Data Protection Regulation and simplified regulations, which are intended to make stock exchange listings easier and less expensive, as the authority announced. It expects that companies will save 400 million euros in administrative costs per year through the simplifications.

According to the Commission, companies with more than 250 employees are considered large companies under the current regulations and must comply with significantly more rules. Now, a new category of companies is to be introduced, which will have fewer than 750 employees and will have to comply with fewer regulations. According to the Commission, this would affect almost 40,000 companies in the EU. The project also requires a majority in the European Parliament and among the EU states.

Company formations should become easier

In a legally non-binding strategy, the Commission also calls for tackling the ten biggest problems of the European single market from the perspective of companies. According to the information, these include complicated company formations, complex EU regulations, limited recognition of professional qualifications, different regulations for packaging and differing national regulations for services.

The Commission promises, among other things, to propose a so-called 28th regulation for European company law, which is intended to make it easier to set up companies. This should make it easier to set up companies digitally and to work throughout the EU according to common rules, for example in tax, labour and insolvency law.

Industry sees good approaches

The German Federation of Industries (BDI) sees good approaches in the plans from Brussels. BDI president Peter Leibinger announced that, above all, small and medium-sized enterprises in intra-European trade still face too many obstacles, which have often existed for 20 years. “If these hurdles were removed, German industry could almost double its exports within Europe, according to estimates,” said Leibinger.

This article was translated to English using an AI tool.

BDI

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