Beyond Manufacturing: A New Competitiveness Agenda for the EU in partnership with retail and wholesale

The EU faces four major challenges: economic security, climate change, technological gaps, and demographic shifts. To address these, a new strategy must empower retail and wholesale sectors, which generate 10% of EU GDP and employ 26 million people.

• Economic Security:
  Strengthening the Single Market and diversifying supply chains are vital. Trade agreements and infrastructure investments will bolster resilience.
• Sustainability & Innovation:
  Encouraging circular economy practices, renewable energy, and waste reduction is essential. Retail and wholesale can drive green and digital transformation.
• Investment Challenges:
  Retailers face funding gaps due to administrative burdens and compliance costs. Simplifying access to capital and fostering SME growth are priorities.
• Demographic & Regional Support:
  Retail provides jobs across urban and rural areas, supporting communities. Investments in local revitalization and workforce development are critical to counter shrinking populations.

Our agenda calls for simplified regulations, harmonised enforcement, and technological innovation to transform these challenges into opportunities for a competitive and resilient Europe.

More details in our position paper.

Better Regulation Checklist

For us the key principles for effective EU regulation include:

• Practicability: Anticipate real-world impacts and involve stakeholders early to ensure guidelines and tools are ready.
• Workability: Simplify compliance and align requirements with practical realities for businesses and public authorities.
• Capability: Set achievable targets by consulting affected industries and assessing consequences.
• Indirect Effects: Address broader impacts on supply chains and stakeholders.
• Competitiveness Check: Balance regulatory goals with market competitiveness and harmonization.
• Flexibility: Focus on outcomes, not prescriptive methods, and maintain technological neutrality.
• Inspection Focus: Target inspections upstream to reduce burdens downstream.
• Avoid Duplication: Implement a “once-only” principle and simplify reporting tools.

These principles aim to ensure high-quality, low-cost, impactful legislation while reducing burdens on businesses. This needs involvement of stakeholders throughout policy development, increasing feedback points and testing options. As well as aligning internal process to ensure policies are consistent, conflicts avoided and competitiveness retained. More information.

Concrete ideas on regulatory simplification

We also believe that steps can be already taken to simplify legislation and support businesses in managing regulatory requirements more efficiently.

• Provide stability, allowing businesses to align decisions with long-term strategies.
• Prioritise implementation and consider non-regulatory approaches where possible.
• Work with Member States to avoid adding complexity or creating inconsistencies when implementing rules or adapting national legislation.
• Introduce sunset clauses to keep regulations relevant and prevent uncertainty from slow guidance.
• Assess whether businesses are already reporting the same requirements before introducing new ones.
• Review existing legislation to remove unnecessary reporting and ensure collected data is actually used.
• Apply a once-only reporting rule: eliminate duplicate reports and investigate if a single centralised report per company group is possible.