Europe must become a place where digital companies can thrive, not drown in paperwork. We welcome the EU’s simplification agenda, but it must go further. Too often, resources are wasted navigating divergent interpretations, duplicative processes or unnecessarily burdensome rules.
Simplification must benefit all innovators, from startups and SMEs to scale-ups and established European leaders. We should be proud of the growth of European companies and ensure that success isn’t met with added complexity. There must be no threshold on ambition, only on bureaucracy. Europe must back its own tech champions and build a strategy to support European platforms and digital services. The message is clear: scrap obsolete rules, stop layering new ones, and deliver smarter regulation that unlocks growth.
When rules are enforced unevenly, trust erodes, confusion grows, and fair competition suffers. Businesses often face 27 interpretations of the same rulebook and overlapping legal instruments. That’s not a Single Market, it’s a regulatory maze.
We call for coordinated enforcement within and across Member States and EU authorities.
For instance, data protection spans data, competition, consumer rights, security and innovation. National authorities across all these domains must work together to ensure coherent, effective enforcement. Another example: to properly enforce EU consumer rules on global actors, faster and closer cooperation is needed among EU countries’ consumer protection authorities.
Aligning decisions, reducing duplication, and streamlining compliance will restore clarity, strengthen the Single Market, and deliver faster, more effective enforcement across borders.
Europe has the chance to lead in trustworthy AI, but not by burying innovation in red tape. Our AI rules must be clear, proportionate, stable, and built to compete globally.
European players must be empowered to develop, deploy, train, and scale AI models, and not be held back by unclear or in some cases unworkable rules. Provide early and clear guidance on what applies, to whom, and when. Align the framework across borders and give innovators the tools and the certainty needed to deliver AI responsibly inside and outside Europe.
Europe needs a data economy that works and protects. The EU must enable responsible data use and re-use while
upholding privacy, security, and trust. This is not a tradeoff; all these elements must work together to give Europe
a real competitive edge. For instance, privacy-enhancing technologies could be part of the solution. If so, let’s promote them.
Europe is not short on rules. From privacy and consumer protection to online interfaces, many issues are already addressed, often tackling the same challenges from different angles. Personalising digital services – a key demand from consumers – is also regulated by the GDPR, UCPD and DSA to name just a few. The real challenge is not a lack of regulation, but making existing rules work together and ensuring they are consistently enforced. Layering new rules onto an already complex system risks undermining enforcement rather than improving it.
We call on the Commission to focus on faster, smarter enforcement: Provide clear guidelines; Coordinate across borders; Centralise oversight where it matters. Let’s stop reinventing the rulebook and start using it.
It’s time to make Europe the most trusted and competitive place for digital innovation to thrive.
Let’s turn ambition into action. Simplification must translate into competitiveness.
Tomasz Pawliszyn
CEO
Marcin Kuśmierz
CEO
Maite Zubiaurre – Van Duijn
CEO
Markus Villig
Co-founder and CEO
Glenn Fogel
CEO
Thomas Metivier
CEO
Michael Komasinski
CEO
Guillaume Clement
CEO
Will Shu
Co-founder and CEO
Niklas Östberg
Co-founder and CEO
Serban Enache
CEO
Tudor Manea
CEO
Thomas Zimmerman
CEO
Johannes Rech
Co-founder and CEO
Dominik Richter
CEO
Francois Leverger
Director General
Jitse Groen
CEO
Antoine Jouteau
President EUTA and CEO Leboncoin
Matthieu Jacquier
CEO
Thomas Jensen
CEO
Philippe Corrot
Co-founder and Co-CEO
Andy Yen
CEO
Daniel Ek
CEO
Dr. Sebastian Dettmers
CEO
John Collison
Co-founder and President
Mette Lykke
CEO
Johannes Thomas
CEO
Adrian Blair
CEO
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
CEO
Adam Jay
CEO
Miki Kuusi
Co-founder and CEO
Robert Gentz
Co-founder and Co-CEO