Executive Summary

Europe has made significant strides in establishing the Digital Single Market (DSM). Since launching the DSM strategy in 2015, the EU has adopted several digital regulations to harmonise rules across Member States, promoting regulatory consistency.

However, the DSM remains incomplete. Businesses still face market fragmentation and regulatory challenges due to inconsistent implementation of regulations across Member States and overlapping regulatory regimes, which could lead to duplication and inconsistencies.

This report provides a proposal to advance regulatory coherence across Europe. It evaluates the coherence of digital regulations and examines the EU law-making process shaping these frameworks.

Achieving consistency across Member States requires stronger cooperation. Inconsistencies often stem from diverging interpretations and limited coordination among national authorities within their cooperation networks. Therefore, national authorities should enhance cooperation networks to promote regulatory coherence (Recommendation 1) and maximise the use of cooperation tools for more efficient enforcement (Recommendation 2).

Ensuring consistency across regulatory regimes requires an established cross-regulatory framework. Regulatory overlaps create both synergies and challenges, while newly implemented cross-regulatory cooperation mechanisms are still in the early stages. Accordingly, national authorities and cooperation networks should foster coordination by embracing a unified cross-regulatory culture (Recommendation 3) and improve enforcement through joint action in cross-regulatory cases (Recommendation 4).

Lastly, consistency in the EU law-making process demands greater uniformity among EU institutions. The current process is often ineffective and inefficient, with EU institutions inconsistently applying Better Regulation principles and infrequently conducting regulatory reviews. In line with the Commission’s agenda to streamline the EU law-making process under the Commissioner for Simplification, EU policymakers should consistently use Better Regulation principles for sound policymaking (Recommendation 5) and systemise ex-post evaluations to strengthen regulatory frameworks (Recommendation 6).

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