"Democratically elected Local and Regional Authorities (LRAs) still have limited influence in shaping EU legislation they are required to implement. Together with the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), they must be given a greater role in a system that should be based on multilevel governance." Piero Mauro Zanin, President of the Regional Council of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a regional parliament with legislative powers made these remarks when presenting his opinion on Better Regulation.
Zanin added that LRAs’ involvement in policy making has the potential to be pivotal in creating more transparent EU laws, keeping the level of administrative burden to a minimum. "Better Regulation means high quality legislation: by creating added value and favouring citizens’, enterprises’ and stakeholders’ participation in the process. It could be the driving force of EU recovery and growth."
Mr Zanin's report urged the EU to make greater use of the proximity to citizens that LRAs enjoy, which gives them a "capacity of capturing, mediating and relaying citizens' concerns". The EU should, in addition, develop a permanent mechanism to enable to citizens to engage in EU affairs.
The European Commission has in recent years made and acted on a commitment to reduce and simplify legislation and to improve transparency. The CoR endorsed the European Commission's initiatives, citing in particular the contribution of the Fit for Future Platform created to guide efforts to simplify EU laws and to reduce related unnecessary costs, and the Task Force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and "Doing Less More Efficiently". It also supported the introduction of a 'do no significant harm' approach to policymaking, a principle that, notably, underpins the EU's Green Deal, whose purpose is to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050. However, Mr Zanin's report and the CoR resolution emphasised that the efforts made so far fall significantly short of the quality of collaboration needed. The Committee faulted the European Commission for failing to adequately take into account the challenges faced by specific regions when drafting legislation. It said that any 'territorially blind' approach – caused, for example, by an absence of sub-national data and lack of sub-national analysis – risked having "an adverse and enduring impact on the Union as a whole, on the spirit of cohesion between territories and on the lives of individuals".
The CoR has itself tried to improve the quality of policy-making by piloting a project to harvest feedback on EU legislation. The Network of Regional Hubs – or RegHubs – project has so far resulted in reports on the merits and flaws of EU legislation on cross-border health care, agricultural support, air quality and public procurement, and it is now an established project. Mr Zanin praised the feedback mechanism, saying: “It is key to further strengthen the CoR’s RegHusb network. Its consultations create an environment for the exchange of good practices, making RegHub a better-regulation instrument itself. Long-term financial support for the development and consolidation of RegHub is needed."
Among specific innovations that the CoR said it would like to see is the possibility of regions being able to join negotiations between the European Commission, European Parliament and EU member states on dossiers that most fundamentally affect regions.