The European Commission is today setting out how we can complete our Better Regulation Agenda.

46. Welcomes the objectives of the better regulation agenda; acknowledges the general need to examine the fitness of regulation now and in the future; however, this fitness cannot be decoupled from the functioning of the financial sector as a whole; underlines the role of REFIT in achieving efficient and effective financial services regulation that takes due account of the proportionality principle and in supporting the stocktaking exercise; calls for Parliament to have a bigger role in the decisions and assessments intrinsic to REFIT; recalls that the focus must be on improving regulation, not deregulating; stresses that ensuring ...[+++]transparency, simplicity, accessibility and fairness across the internal market should be part of the better regulation agenda for consumers; stresses also that the EU must not create an unintended compliance burden in the drive to bring about greater harmonisation under the CMU;

Withdrawal, REFIT and the ‘better regulation agenda’

9. Insists that the Commission rethink REFIT so as to ensure that the better regulation and simplification agenda is not used as a pretext for deregulation that weakens social protection of workers, consumer protection, environmental standards, animal welfare standards and social dialogue;

I believe, Commissioner Potočnik, that this programme is a sign of better regulation, that we have really succeeded here in implementing the objectives concerning SMEs and better regulation under the Seventh Framework Research Programme appropriately.

10. Repeats its earlier calls to secure better regulation through an interinstitutional agreement based on the actions plans of the Commission and Council and urges the European Council to realise the importance of a joint and constructive approach by the three institutions in this area which only a proper agreement can reliably secure; calls therefore on the European Council to express its support for an interinstitutional agreement on better regulation at its Seville meeting, to be concluded by the end of this year;