Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Added20. Notes that simplifying administrative procedures, such as licensing and certification, and streamlining compliance processes is essential in order to reduce costs and legal uncertainties, particularly for SMEs; highlights that streamlined processes would enable SMEs to operate more effectively within the single market;

Added21. Notes that inconsistency in the implementation, enforcement and coordination of EU rules hampers the effective functioning of the single market and could have negative effects on the free movement of workers and professionals; underlines that administrative obstacles and inconsistent recognition of qualifications risk increasing labour and skills shortages and weakening the EU’s competitiveness; urges the Commission to continue evaluating the application of the Professional Qualifications Directive across Member States and identify measures to address inconsistencies in recognition processes; highlights the need for streamlined automatic procedures and fast-track mechanisms to facilitate the recognition of professional qualifications, particularly in sectors facing labour shortages; calls on the Commission to ensure that the single market rules for the free movement of workers respect the current social standards in the Member States while stressing the importance of removing unjustified barriers; strongly supports the digitalisation of the A1 form, required under Regulation 883/204, throughout all Member States to streamline procedures for cross-border provision of services;

Added22. Considers that the single market plays a vital role in times of crisis if Member States act in a coordinated way; considers, in this respect, that the recently adopted Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA) will be important to ensure such coordination so as to prevent shortages and ensure the smooth functioning of the single market, including the free movement of essential goods and services throughout the EU;

Added23. Recalls the importance of common standards for the functioning of the single market; stresses the importance of safeguarding the EU standardisation system, while improving it where issues have been identified, and maintaining its operational integrity;

Added24. Urges the Commission to identify and reduce unnecessary reporting burdens by implementing targeted measures, such as extending reporting intervals, eliminating redundant obligations and ensuring proportionality in sector-specific requirements, without compromising the policy objectives, which the requirements seek to implement; reiterates the need to ensure that reporting obligations stemming from various pieces of EU legislation are coherent; stresses the importance of the ‘think small first’ principle, of tailored approaches for SMEs and start-ups, and of fostering a digital business environment, enabled by trusted digital identities, secure data exchanges and legally recognised digital notifications; emphasises the importance of upholding the ‘once-only’ principle in order to streamline compliance procedures and reiterates the importance of harmonising reporting formats and digital interfaces across Member States where feasible; stresses that justified and proportionate reporting requirements are necessary to ensure proper monitoring and compliance with adopted rules, thereby ensuring effective enforcement and improved data collection to guide future policy initiatives;

Added25. Emphasises that the new legislative framework aims to improve the internal market for goods and strengthen the conditions for placing a wide range of products on the EU market; calls on the Commission to revise it with a view to making it future-proof, ensuring its adaptability to evolving geopolitical challenges and to the requirements of the digital and green transitions, thus enhancing the overall competitiveness of the EU single market;

Added26. Acknowledges the Commission’s intention to propose a new EU-wide legal regime, the ‘28th legal regime’, aimed at creating a business environment that supports the growth and upscaling of SMEs, including smaller and innovative companies, fostering EU global competitiveness; notes that the new regime could facilitate the development and deployment of the upcoming European Business Wallet;

Embracing digitalisation and artificial intelligence for growth and governance

Change 20

Changed21.27. Welcomes the Commission’s planned fitness check on the legislative acquis in the digital policy area; calls on the Commission to include an Omnibus simplification regarding the envisaged Digital Package; demands that the Commission clarifyassesses and clarifies the legislative framework and the interplay between existingcurrent EU legal acts, such as the Digital Services Act, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Artificial Intelligence Act, e-commercethe rulesRegulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising, the Product Liability Directive, e-commerce and cybersecurity rules, and between these acts and future legislative initiatives before their adoption by the Commission; insists that regulators, networks of national authorities and stakeholders be involved in this process and stresses that the results of this mapping exercise should serve to identify potential overlapping, contradictory provisions and potential enforcement conflicts and address these shortcomings; in addition, it should serve to improve coordination between enforcement authorities across the Member States and the Commission’s internal services and to improve the ability of businesses to invest and innovate in the EU; insists that the Commission ensure that all laws adopted and enforced in the 2019-2024 Commission term are correctly and consistently implemented and applied across all of the Member States; calls on the Commission to include, where necessary and justified by impact assessments, proposals for simplification in the envisaged digital package, aimed at increasing coherency, legal clarity and predictability for all stakeholders, without undermining agreed policy objectives;

Change 21

Removed22. Recognises the potential of digitalisation and artificial intelligence as key tools for reducing administrative burdens and for streamlining administrative procedures, including reporting, authorisation, permitting and compliance requirements; believes that electronic tools and portals should be the standard for all reporting and administrative requirements and envisions their integration into a digital ‘one-stop shop’, where possible;

Added28. Notes the upcoming Commission report on the interplay between the Digital Services Act and other legal acts, and encourages the Commission to clarify through this report the way in which this regulation interacts with other legal acts, including how to address possible overlaps, in order to support the effective implementation and enforcement of the EU digital rulebook and to provide legal certainty to service providers, users, consumers and regulatory authorities;

Added29. Stresses that digital policy, especially in emerging technologies or in relation to highly complex technologies, should follow an iterative approach, also taking into account tools such as structured dialogue with businesses and other relevant stakeholders, co-regulation and regulatory sandboxes to ensure practical, proportionate and future-proof rules, designed with innovation in mind, while avoiding unintended consequences and assessing the impact of recently adopted legal acts before proposing new obligations; recalls the importance of common standards for the functioning of the digital single market; underlines the importance of EU leadership in the standardisation of digital technologies, as well as the critical importance of transatlantic and international cooperation, in this sphere, to ensure technological sovereignty and global competitiveness, in particular in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud services;

Added30. Recognises the potential of digitalisation and artificial intelligence as key tools for boosting the EU’s competitiveness, reducing administrative burdens, streamlining and automating administrative procedures, including reporting, authorisation, permitting and compliance requirements, as well as for facilitating market entry and assessing applicable legislations; stresses the need to promote the uptake of these key tools to enhance regulatory efficiency, support better implementation and monitoring of single market legislation; notes that the varying level of digitalisation for administrations in the Member States constitutes a cross-border barrier;

Added31. Believes that electronic tools and portals should be the standard for all reporting and administrative requirements and envisions their integration into a digital ‘one-stop shop’; calls on the Commission to explore the feasibility of such a digital ‘one-stop shop’ by expanding the Single Digital Gateway in order to facilitate a streamlined approach to accessing information, administrative procedures and assistance services for businesses and to offer more online services to both citizens and companies, particularly for SMEs, utilising digital public infrastructure such as the EU Digital Identity Wallets and the upcoming European Business Wallet, and ensuring consistency by streamlining such tools in all relevant legislative proposals;

Added32. Underlines the importance of interoperability to reduce administrative burdens, particularly the need to make reporting obligations coherent and easy to fulfil, and calls on the Commission to continue exploring ways to improve and digitalise reporting procedures to improve information sharing and compliance while not overburdening companies, including automated business-to-government reporting; welcomes the Once-Only Technical System as a key tool to enable automated cross-border data exchange and reduce duplicative reporting burdens for businesses; emphasises that any requirements for data sharing and reporting should be designed with digitalisation in mind, ensuring that data sharing and reporting requirements can be data-driven and automated;

Added33. Calls on the Commission to streamline current IT tools available to economic operators and relevant national authorities for notifying and communicating relevant information such as information on accidents, corrective measures and other data on the safety of products in the single market; highlights that a single IT tool should be developed in order to reduce time and costs and to increase compliance and enforcement;

Added34. Calls on the Commission to improve the development of compliance tools such as codes of practice, ensuring that they remain within the limits of underlying legal obligations, are practically implementable for companies of all sizes, and are developed through meaningful and timely stakeholder consultations;

Added35. Stresses the need for modern and robust digital infrastructure to facilitate the EU’s ambitions in digitalisation and frontier technologies; calls for continued investment in developing ‘digital highways’ that include cross-border high-capacity broadband networks, 5G corridors, secure cloud and edge infrastructure, as well as interoperable digital public services;

Added36. Calls for the harmonised rollout of digital labelling and the Digital Product Passport in EU product legislation; stresses their potential to lower compliance burdens, enhance consumer access to accurate information, and support multilingual interoperability while preserving the possibility for consumers’ products to be accompanied by essential information related to safety in paper format; urges the Commission to facilitate the development of harmonised standards and detailed guidance to avoid fragmentation and facilitate SME participation in cross-border trade;

Improving consumer protection in the digital age

Change 22

Changed23.37. Highlights that the streamlining of consumer protection legislation should not lower the current high standard of consumer protection across Europe;the EU; acknowledges the significant progress made in strengthening consumer protection rules and adapting them to new technological and sustainability realities; underlines the need to further strengthen consumer protection, such as in the area of e-commerce with regard to false or misleading product information; emphasises that effective enforcement and a thorough analysis of the consumer protection laws and their impact is important; insists that new legislative initiatives should focus on closing gaps in current legislation or address new substantiated challenges that are not tackled within the current legal framework;

Change 23

Removed24. Reaffirms that consumer protection laws should remain principle-based and coherent across different legal instruments; calls for proportionate and purpose-driven consumer information obligations;

Added38. Highlights that the rapid expansion of digital platforms and e-commerce has introduced new market dynamics and has created advanced opportunities and challenges and risks for users; acknowledges that the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act constitute important legislative instruments to ensure fair competition, contestability and fairness in digital platforms, while also fostering a safer, trustful and more transparent digital environment and consumer protection in the digital economy, and calls for proper enforcement of this technology legislation to ensure genuine, autonomous and informed consumer choice, protection and fair competition;

Removed25. Calls for enhanced consumer redress mechanisms and the full enforcement of consumer rights in the EU, including through a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation;

Added39. Reaffirms that consumer protection laws should remain mainly principle-based and coherent across various legal instruments, but should also allow for more specific provisions when necessary for legal certainty for both businesses and consumers; stresses the importance of avoiding excessive or redundant information obligations, which may impose unnecessary burdens on businesses without enhancing consumer understanding; calls for proportionate and purpose-driven consumer information obligations; notes that, according to the 2025 Consumer Condition Scoreboard, most consumers are not aware of their rights; calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop campaigns to increase consumer awareness;

Added40. Urges the Commission to use digital tools to enhance transparency and consumer trust in cross-border transactions; calls for effective enforcement of consumer redress mechanisms, including those concerning collective redress, and the full enforcement of consumer rights in the EU, including through a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation, focusing on improving cross-border enforcement; underlines, furthermore, the importance of the revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation to improve cross-border enforcement and to address unfair behaviour, particularly by non-EU traders; notes the importance of strengthening cooperation among Member States’ various competent authorities, including through coordinated joint-enforcement projects and streamlining the exchange of information;

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41. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.