Tech Innovation

The EU’s 2025 Work Plan: What It Means for Consumer Choice

The European Commission’s 2025 Work Programme, titled “Moving Forward Together: A Bolder, Simpler, Faster Union,” outlines key priorities that will shape policies impacting consumers across the continent. As consumer advocates, we at the Consumer Choice Center (CCC) are closely analyzing these plans to ensure they prioritize innovation, consumer choice, and regulatory simplicity rather than burdening citizens and businesses with excessive red tape.

We’ve categorized the most significant aspects under three pillars: Fit for Growth, Tech Innovation, and Lifestyle Choices.

Red Tape Loss

At the end of last year, we published a report on the Red Tape Loss, detailing how excessive bureaucracy and overregulation in Europe are not only driving up costs for consumers but also stifling innovation, limiting access to new products, and restricting service availability. You can read the full report here.

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1. Fit for Growth: A Competitive and Consumer-Friendly Market

The EU recognizes that bureaucracy and overregulation have stifled economic growth and entrepreneurship. The 2025 Work Programme sets out several measures aimed at reducing burdens on businesses and consumers, but will they be enough?

Regulatory Simplification and Investment Boosts

  • The Commission plans to reduce reporting obligations by at least 25% and by 35% for SMEs, aiming to make compliance easier for businesses. A streamlined regulatory environment should, in theory, allow businesses to focus on innovation rather than paperwork.
  • The Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act and European Biotech Act aim to cut through bureaucratic delays in biotech and energy-intensive industries. While decarbonization is important, it must be done in a way that does not restrict consumer choice or drive up costs.
  • The Savings and Investment Union aims to boost capital market access for European businesses, which could help lower prices and increase product variety for consumers.

✅ Consumer Win: Less red tape means faster innovation and more choices.
⚠️ Risk: Will the EU truly simplify regulations, or just create different ones?

2. Tech Innovation: A Digital Future That Works for Consumers

The Commission is betting big on AI, quantum computing, and cross-border digital services, but risks remain if regulations become overly restrictive.

Digital Networks and AI Development

  • The Digital Networks Act will promote cross-border network operations, potentially reducing telecom costs for consumers.
  • The Apply AI Strategy and AI Factories Initiative aim to boost Europe’s AI sector, but it remains to be seen whether the upcoming AI regulations will encourage innovation or stifle it with excessive compliance costs.
  • European Business Wallets will simplify business-to-business and consumer transactions, potentially enhancing trust and reducing friction in digital purchases.

✅ Consumer Win: More connectivity and AI-powered services could enhance consumer experiences.
⚠️ Risk: If AI regulations are too restrictive, Europe may lag behind global competitors, limiting tech-driven consumer benefits.

3. Lifestyle Choices: A Balance Between Sustainability and Freedom

The EU is advancing sustainability policies, but consumer freedom must remain protected.

Food Security and Agriculture

  • The Vision for Agriculture and Food aims to ensure stable food prices and supply, but could lead to more intervention in food markets.
  • A proposed EU-wide biotechnology framework could allow for faster approval of new food innovations, benefiting consumers with healthier and more sustainable options.

Energy and Consumer Costs

  • The Clean Industrial Deal focuses on reducing emissions while maintaining competitiveness, but consumers must be protected from rising energy costs.
  • Plans to phase out Russian energy imports entirely could impact energy prices and availability, making affordability a key issue.

✅ Consumer Win: Sustainable food and energy policies can improve long-term affordability.
⚠️ Risk: Overregulation may lead to price increases and reduced choices in food and energy markets.

Conclusion: Will 2025 Be the Year of Consumer Choice?

While the EU’s work plan includes positive steps for economic simplification and technological innovation, the success of these initiatives will depend on how they are implemented.

Consumers benefit most when markets are free, competitive, and innovative—not when excessive regulations limit choices. The CCC will continue to monitor and advocate for policies that empower consumers, reduce bureaucratic burdens, and promote a vibrant, innovation-driven economy.

👉 Want to stay informed on consumer choice in the EU? Follow the Consumer Choice Center for updates and advocacy!

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Sharing economy: we need to rethink work

The Consumer Choice Center has launched a new and improved version of its Sharing Economy Index, ranking 60 cities around the world by their openness to innovation in the sector.

The index is primarily a guide for consumers, pointing them toward the most (and least) innovation-friendly cities. This way, they can take advantage of the best the sharing economy has to offer.

At the same time, it teaches regulators an important lesson about the sharing economy. The sector is a 21st-century marvel, from the way the company is set up to workers’ personal schedules. By contrast, efforts to impose one-size-fits-all legislation on the industry are stuck in the past and will only leave everyone worse off.

For centuries now, the usual workplace was organized around a clear hierarchy, where some completed a set number of known chores and others watched over them to make sure the job got done.

The traditional factory, with its manual laborers and overseers, fits the same description. As tasks in the economy multiplied and the world became richer, factories often gave way to offices and worker overalls became shirts and ties. The underlying structure of the workplace, nonetheless, remained the same.

The sharing economy blows this old model out of the water. Gone is the hierarchy of the factory assembly line or office arrangement, replaced by a network designed to match independent buyers and sellers in ways that benefit both parties. Companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Fiverr are platforms for private individuals to supply goods or services to those in need, with no controlling manager or bureaucratic system getting in the way of exchanges.

Such decentralization doesn’t stop at the structure that companies take. It extends all the way to the everyday tasks of those working in the gig economy. As noted in the Consumer Choice Center’s report, around 79% of independent laborers in the US and 80% of those in the EU cited the ability to produce their own schedule as the primary reason why they chose the position in the first place.

Thanks to its open-ended nature, the sharing economy is able to bounce back from serious challenges. If one part of the network is disrupted, another can take its place, with the larger web always surviving. For instance, Uber has been able to remain active in Ukraine during the Russian invasion, having to move 60 tons of supplies from Romania into Ukraine.

Regulators do not share the same positive picture of the gig industry. Instead, they want workers to enjoy the legal protection and benefits of being a regular salaried worker in a standard company. The same policymakers believe an employee must be able to demand unionization, healthcare benefits, or compensation for negligence and that platform owners should be forced to comply with these demands.

Were regulators to have their way with the sharing economy, however, decentralization would be no more. Suggested legislation marks the return to the old model of factory and office. The US Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the European Commission’s 2021 platform work proposal relegates gig workers to the status of permanent employees and standard managers based on a number of familiar criteria: work and safety, collective bargaining, and a required number of working hours per week.

The consequences would be awful all around. Far from legal certainty, some gig workers would be left jobless altogether, as they are unable to work on a 9 to 5 schedule. This hits vulnerable groups the hardest since they are most reliant on flexible work environments.

Consumers will suffer too. With more and more regulations, services become costlier and harder to acquire. Once layoffs intensify and companies go bankrupt, the goods and services that customers have grown to rely on may not be available anymore.

It’s advisable for policymakers to look toward the future rather than the past. Recognize and foster the strengths of the sharing economy by getting out of the way and letting workers, consumers, and the firms themselves decide the fate of the sharing economy.

Originally published here

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A Europe without the sharing economy: scary tale or real future?

The latest legal challenges to Uber are yet another example of policymakers giving sharing economy platforms an unnecessarily hard time despite the flexibility and independence they offer both workers and consumers.

Uber’s fight for existence in Brussels is a win-or-lose moment for the sharing economy in the European Union. The clash comes at a time when steadfast legislative and court actions across the bloc aim to reclassify platform workers as employees and upend opportunities for contractors. Unless the worrying trend is reversed, European consumers will find themselves cut off from innovation and choice.

The current Brussels Uber ban is based on an archaic 1995 law that prohibits drivers from using smartphones. While it should be a great shame for all of Belgium that such a law has remained untouched till today, it is also hardly surprising. Brussels’ taxi lobby has long been unhappy with the emergence of ridesharing, and these restrictions play to their benefit.

Uber began operating in Brussels in 2014 and had to continuously resist the system and fight back through costly court appeals and restrictions to survive. In 2015, the Belgian commercial court banned UberPOP — a traditional peer-to-peer service — by ruling in favour of Taxis Verts, a cab firm, just to name one example. Since then, Uber drivers have had to get a special licence to operate, which made the service more expensive and less accessible.

However, consumers in Brussels still enjoy the services of Uber. Over 1200 residents of the EU capital signed a petition against the smartphone ban, arguing that “there is no valid and digital alternative to the platform in Brussels at the moment”. On the supply side, there are currently about 2000 drivers using the Uber app. The fact that the Brussels government is selectively enforcing an old law only now, after multiple attempts to get rid of Uber, shows that the company crossed the Rubicon of success, and it has become too inconvenient and competitive to the taxi lobby.

Recently, in Brussels, there have also been calls to reclassify self-employed drivers as employees. This witch hunt after the gig economy mirrors the recent Dutch court ruling about employment benefits for ridesharing drivers and Spanish “riders” law, which concerns the status of delivery workers. Under the pretence of providing security and stability, these interventions threaten the very nature of the sharing economy and are oblivious to the drivers’ needs and flexibility.

Sharing economy platforms give their contractors flexibility and independence, and that is exactly what those choosing to ride share or deliver food are seeking. By surveying 1,001 active Uber drivers in London, a 2018 study by the University of Oxford and Lund University found that they joined the platform because of autonomy, scheduling flexibility, or improved work-life balance that the sharing economy provides. Moreover, the flexibility was so valuable to them that they would only accept fixed schedules on the condition of significant earnings increases.

Being an independent contractor is linked with “greater enjoyment of daily activities, a decrease in psychological strain, and a greater ability to face problems”, according to a study at the Paris School of Economics. In pursuit of “better” labour standards, it is easy to forget that value is subjective, and that one size doesn’t fit all. Drivers who make a living through platforms make a conscious choice in favour of flexibility and autonomy, and their freedom to do so must be preserved.

By providing value to thousands of consumers and giving platform contractors a chance to plan their time better through alternative work arrangements, the sharing economy makes our lives easier, better, and more exciting. But some European policymakers are giving the sharing economy in the EU — and especially ridesharing — a hard time, which it doesn’t deserve. It’s time for that to stop.

Originally published here

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The best way to preserve the sharing economy is not to intervene

Throughout the pandemic, the sharing economy has proved to be one of the most resilient models of human interaction.

Food delivery apps played an important role in preserving our sanity during quarantines and lockdowns, and ride hailing apps made it possible for us to see our loved ones when public transport was inaccessible. However, as a result of travel restrictions, some sectors of the sharing economy have suffered severe losses. 

The latest Consumer Choice Center’s Sharing Economy Index examines the impact the pandemic has had on the sharing economy in 50 cities globally. The index’s main goal is to inform consumers about the variety of sharing economy services at hand. To measure global sharing economy friendliness, the index looks at the availability and access to ride-hailing, flat-sharing services, e-scooters, professional car sharing, peer-to-peer car rental, and gym sharing. 

Some governments have sought to use the pandemic as a pretext to further restrictions of consumer choice in the said fields. For example, in June 2020, Amsterdam banned short-term accommodation rentals including Airbnb from operating in the three districts of its historical centre. Fortunately, the ban was overturned in March this year. 

Similarly, in June 2020, Lisbon’s mayor pledged to “get rid of Airbnb” once the coronavirus pandemic is over. However, Airbnb is still available in the city, and hopefully remains so.

According to the findings of the 2021 Sharing Economy Index, The top 10 cities according to the index are Tallinn, Tbilisi, São Paulo, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Kyiv, Mexico City, Oslo, Stockholm.

On the other hand, Minsk, Valletta, Amsterdam, The Hague, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Nicosia, Sofia, Tokyo, Athens, Luxembourg City found themselves at the very bottom of the list.

Eastern Europe continues to have a more liberal attitude towards the sharing economy while Western and Central European countries stick to the restrictive approach. Both Nordic capitals — Stockholm and Oslo — are among the top sharing economy friendly cities in the world. Similarly, their Northern European neighbours — Tallinn, Vilnius, and Riga — also score highest in the Index. 

Tallinn remains the most sharing economy friendly city. lts low level of regulation of ride-hailing and flat-sharing services along with openness to e-scooters and outstanding innovation in the digital space helped take it to the first place. Estonia is well-known for its booming digital state, and the fact there is even a carpooling app for kids reinforces this fact.

Although the 2021 Index’s results weren’t significantly different from the last year’s, and Eastern and Northern European cities seem to lead the way on peer-to-peer exchange, there are signs that this might soon change, too. As the sharing economy services gain popularity, the temptation to overregulate them grows exponentially. Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, for example, might soon become the next European city to ban e-scooters from sidewalks. 

Europe needs to approach the regulation of the sharing economy in a smart way, and that implies putting consumers, and their needs, first. Excessive taxation and bureaucracy in the form of various permits do more harm than good and make consumers foot the bill. As we are recovering from the pandemic, we need to encourage Europeans to effectively exchange their assets with each other and to make the most out of them. The best way to do that is not to get out of the way.

Originally published here.

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