With his report on Europe’s competitiveness in 2024, Mario Draghi reignited a central debate. He emphasized that Europe’s economic strength crucially depends on how well innovation, regulation, and technological capability are integrated. One of his key recommendations was to simplify and better align existing regulations in order to safeguard Europe’s competitiveness.
The European Commission is responding to these impulses with its planned Omnibus Agenda, which aims to significantly simplify and modernize the European regulatory framework by 2030. A key component of this agenda is the Digital Package, which also includes a review of European AI regulation. The goal is to make digital legislation more coherent and to facilitate its implementation for businesses and public authorities.
One year after presenting his report, Mario Draghi spoke again at the High-Level Conference on Competitiveness, using the AI Act as an example of the current challenges of balanced regulation. While the first provisions have been successfully implemented, he warned that the next phase, particularly concerning high-risk systems in sensitive areas such as healthcare or critical infrastructure, must remain proportionate and should not hinder innovation.
Against this background, the Bertelsmann Stiftung, supported by the German AI Association, which opened its network for the empirical part, has published the white paper “Simplifying European AI Regulation.” In it, Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker, Dr. Robert Kilian, and Prof. Dr. Jana Costas illustrate how the AI Act, as part of the planned Digital Package, can be purposefully simplified to make it more practical without diminishing its protective effect. With this white paper, the authors aim to make a constructive contribution to the European regulatory debate and to demonstrate, using the example of the AI Act, what simplification can concretely mean. In the current discussion, simplification is often wrongly equated with deregulation; however, it actually refers to strengthening clarity, coherence, and the protection of fundamental rights.
A distinctive feature of the report is its empirical foundation. Through 15 interviews and an interdisciplinary workshop, experts from business, academia, and civil society contributed their perspectives. Their assessments show that the main obstacle is not the AI Act itself but the lack of coordination with existing European regulations. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular face the challenge of having to comply with different obligations stemming from multiple legal acts simultaneously, which leads to high administrative burdens and legal uncertainty.
The white paper serves as a preliminary stage for a more in-depth analysis. This comprehensive follow-up study will be published at the end of November 2025.
