Regulatory simplification – the use of digital tools in better law-making

Background

Every year, the EU generates 18 000 pages of new binding legislation. For the average citizen to read all these legal texts, it would take them about 720 hours a year – that's equivalent to two hours per day.

Digital tools can help make the legislative process more transparent and legislation much easier to navigate. These tools can help lawmakers in drafting and analysing laws and can make legal jargon easier to understand for the public. Predictive analytics and machine learning are game changers in assessing the potential impact of new laws on businesses and economic growth. Tools assist lawmakers by flagging redundant regulations and make it simpler for people to follow the rules by automating processes and reducing paperwork. Regulators should also make better use of the data in their databases and registers and not repeatedly request data from businesses.

Several countries have adopted digital tools for lawmaking, and the private sector also offers great inspiration for e-tools helping businesses with compliance, such as the Czech Legal Electronic System.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is the first EU body to put forward recommendations on how the EU’s law-making process should evolve – leveraging digital tools and mapping legal obligations more effectively. It proposes that each new legal act include a clear and concise summary of obligations. These summaries should be drafted by regulators for clarity and quality but formatted in a way that generates structured metadata, thus allowing them to be used by digital tools. AI can then play a crucial role in identifying overlaps, inconsistencies and gaps, by linking related provisions and highlighting how norms from different sources interact.

The EESC also highlights the need to respect legitimacy and enforceability. Before digital tools are put into use, there should be careful testing and proper training, and it should be easy for people to give feedback or report problems.

The EESC clearly states that digital tools and AI should only assist lawmakers, not replace them, and should be used to support democracy, not to take the place of human decision-making.

Key points:

In the opinion, the EESC:

• Emphasises the importance of making regulations simpler, and points out how digital tools – including AI and e-government platforms – can boost transparency, efficiency, and accountability in EU law-making;
• Recommends that all new legal acts at the EU, national, regional, and local levels include a clear summary of obligations, and suggests the same should be done for existing legislation to make regulations more accessible;
• Stresses the need for a unified, interoperable EU digital platform for lawmaking. This platform would centralise texts and metadata, enable real-time consistency checks, help assess legal interdependencies, and encourage the use of harmonised language.

Read the opinion.

Additional information

Section: Single Market, Production and Consumption

Opinion number: INT/1088

Opinion type: Exploratory opinion

Rapporteur: Alena Mastantuono

Co-rapporteur: Tymoteusz Adam Zych

Reference: Request of the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU

Date of adoption by section: 26/6/2025

Result of the vote: 70 in favour/0 against/1 abstention                                                   

Date of adoption in plenary: 17/07/2025

Result of the vote: in favour/ against/ abstentions

Contacts:

Press officer: Laura Lui          

Tel.: + 32 2 546 9189

Email:  laurairena.lui@eesc.europa.eu

Administrator: Marco Manfroni

Tel.: + 32 2 546 9140

Email: Marco.Manfroni@eesc.europa.eu