When Robert Schuman and the other founders of the European Community laid the groundwork for integration, they had a clear conviction: nations that trade together do not go to war. That insight gave birth to the single market, which was never meant to be an end in itself but a vehicle for opportunity, competition, and economic resilience.
For Gitta Connemann, chair of the CDU's influential business association MIT, this is not a distant historical fact. Her mother is Dutch, her father German. In her family, Europe was lived daily: reconciliation after war, open borders, shared values, and trust replacing suspicion. Her constituency on the Dutch border sees the benefits firsthand—Germany and the Netherlands exchange goods worth over €200 billion annually, and commuters, tradespeople, and students cross the frontier without checks.
That is Europe at its best. But Connemann asks whether the continent is still on the right track—or whether it has come to believe that more rules automatically mean more Europe.
While others build, Europe fills forms
The global economy is shifting at breakneck speed. The United States is pouring hundreds of billions into future technologies through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. China is aggressively promoting its key industries. Europe, meanwhile, has been busy drafting regulations. Since the start of the last legislative term, the EU has published more than 10,000 legal acts. The European Commission itself acknowledges that businesses are drowning in bureaucracy and has promised to cut administrative burdens by 25 percent, and by 35 percent for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Those promises are welcome, but reality tells a different story. The so-called omnibus acts are a step toward simplification, yet simplification is not deregulation. In parallel, the EU launched hundreds of legislative initiatives—from the Green Deal and digital rules to due diligence, sustainability, and reporting obligations. The numbers do not add up.
Europe does not need less Europe; it needs a Europe that returns to its strengths. And its greatest strength is the Mittelstand—the small and medium-sized enterprises that form the backbone of the continent's economy. In Germany, more than 99 percent of companies are Mittelstand firms. Across the EU, SMEs employ roughly two-thirds of the private-sector workforce and drive innovation far more than any administration.
Yet these businesses are increasingly spending their resources not on new machinery or new markets, but on compliance, documentation, and reporting. Large corporations can hire dedicated teams to handle the paperwork. A family firm in a rural area, a skilled trade, or a start-up cannot. Many entrepreneurs tell Connemann: "We are not looking for subsidy programmes. We are looking for freedom to act."
Every additional rule costs time, money, and trust. The prevailing assumption seems to be that every entrepreneur is under general suspicion. The problem is not any single regulation but the cumulative weight. As Connemann puts it, it is not the last drop that makes the barrel overflow—at some point, the barrel is simply full.
A moratorium on new burdens
Connemann proposes a clear brake: no new burdens for businesses until existing ones have been demonstrably reduced—not just announced or calculated on paper, but measurable. Every new law should follow a simple rule: for every new burden, at least one existing one must be removed.
This is not an attack on good regulation. Good rules are measured and proportionate; they set objectives without prescribing every step. Reporting, documentation, and disclosure obligations should be systematically reviewed, and anything that adds no value should be scrapped. Today, the courage to cut is more important than the courage to write.
Instead of a clear-out, however, new burdens are already on the horizon. The planned Digital Fairness Act would impose additional information and transparency requirements. The Green Claims Directive would create new documentation demands for sustainability claims. The announced Quality Jobs Act threatens a broad range of labour law obligations in a single package. National implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive adds more reporting duties, particularly for SMEs. And the EU's deforestation regulation (EUDR) continues to generate compliance headaches.
Each initiative has a comprehensible objective. But taken together, they produce exactly what Europe's businesses have long suffered from: ever more obligations, ever more evidence, ever more documentation. Europe risks winning the world championship in form-filling rather than the innovation race.
Connemann also calls for a principle of discontinuity: legislative ideas that cannot be adopted in one term should not automatically carry over to the next, as if the world had not changed. Europe must have the option to say goodbye to outdated proposals. This would allow for a fresh political start and ensure that regulation keeps pace with reality.
The EU was built on coal and steel, not paperwork. To remain competitive, it must remember that lesson. The Mittelstand is waiting for action, not more directives.
