EESC calls for digital overhaul of EU law-making to improve transparency and accessibility

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has urged European institutions to rethink how laws are made and managed in the digital age, warning that the current legislative system has become overly complex, opaque and difficult for citizens and businesses to navigate.

In an opinion adopted at its July 2025 plenary session, the EESC set out a series of recommendations on how digital tools, including AI and automation, could be responsibly integrated into EU law-making. The Committee stressed that technology should be used to enhance transparency, consistency and efficiency, while avoiding risks such as bias, discrimination or errors in legislative processes.

The EESC pointed to the scale of the challenge facing the EU’s legal system. Each year, around 18,000 pages of binding EU legislation are added. According to the Committee, it would take an average citizen roughly 720 hours a year to read all new legal texts, while recurring administrative costs across the EU reached an estimated €150 billion in 2022. Over time, the accumulation of laws has created unintended burdens and made it harder to understand how different rules interact.

Rapporteur Alena Mastantuono described a disconnect between technological progress and legislative practice, arguing that EU law-making still relies on outdated approaches. She said that neither citizens nor lawmakers can easily track how rules overlap or conflict, which undermines compliance and trust in public institutions.

To address this, the EESC proposed that every new legal act, at the EU and national levels, should be accompanied by a clear and concise summary explaining its requirements. These summaries would be written by regulators to ensure accuracy and structured so they can be processed by digital tools. AI could then be used to identify overlaps, inconsistencies and gaps across different pieces of legislation. The Committee recommended applying the same approach to existing laws to make them more accessible.

Another key proposal is the creation of a unified, interoperable EU digital platform for law-making. Such a platform would centralise legislative texts and metadata, enable real-time consistency checks and promote the use of harmonised legal language across institutions and member states.

At the same time, the EESC emphasised that digital tools should support, not replace, human decision-making. Proper testing, training and safeguards should be in place before deployment, and mechanisms should allow citizens and stakeholders to provide feedback or flag problems. Transparency in public consultations was highlighted as essential, alongside efforts to improve digital literacy to ensure meaningful participation.

The Committee also cautioned that online tools should complement rather than substitute traditional forms of engagement, particularly with trade unions, social partners and vulnerable groups. While some countries and private actors have already developed digital solutions to help manage legal complexity, the EESC argued that any EU-wide approach must remain citizen-focused and grounded in democratic accountability.

The opinion positions digitalisation as a potential way to make EU law clearer and more coherent, provided it is guided by strong governance, human oversight and a commitment to accessibility and trust.