Europe’s credibility depends on turning ambition into results. As pressures on the European Union grow, the gap between policy agendas and outcomes may increase. Closing this Delivery Gap requires moving beyond better regulation and simplification towards a delivery-centred policymaking culture and shared responsibility across governance levels and EU institutions.

The EU lacks neither ambition nor initiatives. Recent years have brought plans to strengthen European competitiveness, accelerate the green and digital transitions, improve economic security, prepare for enlargement and navigate a harder geopolitical environment.

EU policymakers see these challenges as demanding collective European responses. But can the EU deliver on its promises? Too often, it falls short.

To close this delivery gap and resist economic and political decline, policymakers should go beyond better regulation box-ticking. They should focus on policy quality and outcomes.

Better regulation is not enough

Evidence-based policymaking has been central to EU governance for decades. A sophisticated Better Regulation framework spans the policy cycle, including impact assessments, consultations, fitness checks and scrutiny by the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB). The OECD ranks the Union among the most advanced regulatory systems.

Yet, in response to criticism that rules were not adequately followed, the Commission has renewed its commitment to ‘simplicity by design’, focused impact assessments, streamlined consultation, enforceability from the outset and stronger review. It recognises that regulatory quality also depends on effective implementation and adaptation.

Good procedures do not automatically produce good policy, however. The RSB points to persistent challenges. For example, in 2025, it reviewed 25 impact assessments and 22 evaluations. It issued an initial negative opinion on 56% and 41% of each, respectively. It repeatedly identified weaknesses in evidence, problem definition, intervention logic and policy options.

These figures are significant, but leave much out. An impact assessment can be skipped or leave a proposal’s assumptions unchallenged. Consultation can follow rather than precede key decisions. An evaluation can flag shortcomings without affecting implementation plans or the next intervention. Evidence can be cherry-picked to fit pre-cooked proposals.

Better regulation cannot remain Europe’s North Star unless the whole institutional machinery, in Brussels and beyond, shifts to a delivery culture and practice.

From simplification to delivery

The Draghi and Letta reports renewed the EU’s focus on simplification, highlighting concrete problems to achieve competitiveness and deepen the Single Market. Regulatory fragmentation and complexity carry costs. Overlapping frameworks can make rules harder to understand and implement.

But simplification alone neither solves the delivery problem nor guarantees good policymaking across relevant fields. It also makes policy improvement a retrospective exercise: adopt legislation, ‘discover’ its complexity, and then add legislation to reduce the burden.

A stronger delivery culture must be outcome-driven from the agenda and design stages, across policies. Before choosing a new regulatory instrument, policymakers should spell out their objective and why and how Europe needs to act. They must ask if it is that existing rules are insufficient, or that implementation and enforcement are. If change is needed, non-legal instruments may produce the desired outcome.

This November, the Commission published its second report on simplification and implementation. It highlights needed measures: clearer rules, expanded consultations with stakeholders and stronger administrative capacity. While these actions are needed, they alone cannot close the gap.

A delivery-centred approach means more than redesigning procedures. It requires cultural change and different political incentives. Assessments and consultations bear fruit only with intellectual honesty and cross-silo cooperation. Legal initiatives should not be rewarded over more impactful and targeted change. Implementation and enforcement require competences and resources and political will across all governance levels.

Focusing on delivery also requires asking uncomfortable questions: are challenges best addressed Union-wide, through enhanced cooperation, or nationally? Are key decisions made at the right level, with clear accountability? The European Parliament and Council, national and local administrations, companies, international organisations and social partners all share responsibility for quality policymaking, and need the resources and skills for it.

Why delivery matters more than ever

The delivery gap is more than accumulated procedural shortcomings or past mistakes. It is the growing distance between EU ambition and legislation and the outcomes that citizens, businesses and societies experience. While complaints about EU policymaking are not new, the scale and risks of this distance are.

European policymaking faces permanent pressure amid permacrisis. Economic insecurity, technological competition, security threats, humanitarian emergencies, the green transition and demographic change all compete for attention. New shocks arrive before the previous ones are absorbed.

Under these conditions, the non-delivery costs rise. In more benign times, some inefficiency may be easier to assimilate. Growth can soften delays. Greater fiscal space can offset poor outcomes. Political regeneration affords space for reprogramming.

Europe has less room for this today. Each failure brings systemic effects. Resources for one priority cannot be invested elsewhere. Limited competitiveness and deindustrialisation undermine economic security. An incomplete Single Market limits Europe’s scope and leverage. Weak enforcement undermines trust and competition. Lack of strategic leadership today brings dependencies tomorrow.

There is a democratic dimension too. Political ambition creates expectations. When institutions announce initiatives without visible results, disappointment with performance can become disappointment with institutions. Avoiding ‘overpromising and underdelivering’ is essential to prevent anxiety about the present and future from fuelling anti-European and populist forces.

Making delivery part of how Europe governs

Putting delivery at the heart of policymaking means linking strategy to political, implementation and operational realities, while maintaining ambition. Another procedural checklist alone will not close the delivery gap. It requires changes in practice and policymaking culture, backed by agency and political leadership.

The EU will continue to regulate. Regulation is part of its institutional DNA. Process-heavy policymaking remains important to its legitimacy. But European leaders should also remember that concrete achievements and due execution of policies and norms are the cornerstone of good government.

This Commentary brings together insights from and the goals of the project Delivery Gap: Future-Proofing EU Policymaking. Centred on its Effective Delivery Forum, the project examines how the delivery gap emerges and what political and institutional changes are needed to close it.

Alberto Horst Neidhardt is a Senior Policy Analyst and Head of the European Diversity and Migration Programme.

The support the European Policy Centre receives for its ongoing operations, or specifically for its publications, does not constitute an endorsement of their contents, which reflect the views of the authors only. Supporters and partners cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.