Putting the EU's better regulation standards to work on its digital rulebook

What we do

Policy sprints: Focused, time-bound working groups that scrutinise a live legislative file and produce decision-ready output – an alternative impact assessment or an alternative evaluation, with graded evidence, named trade-offs and drafted amendments. Our first sprint examines the Digital Fitness Check, the Commission's review of whether the digital rulebook works as a whole, timed to land before decision-making begins.

A policy quality standard: A transparent methodology for assessing how well a policy was made – built from the findings our sprints generate, benchmarked against the Better Regulation Toolbox, and extended to cover what existing standards miss. It is being developed and stress-tested with an independent expert group before it is applied publicly.

An open evidence base: The dossiers, sources and assessments behind our work, published as a cumulative, reusable resource – including tools for navigating a digital rulebook of more than 100 cross-referring legal instruments and the many bodies responsible for applying them. Built first for our own sprints, then opened to everyone.

Why we exist

Better regulation standards are relevant across EU legislation. But in digital policy, upholding these standards is even more critical: the EU holds the legislative competence to set rules for the single market, meaning member states cannot repair a bad law from below. That makes the quality of the inputs at EU level the lever for digital laws that work on the ground. 

The Better Regulation Hub produces those inputs by convening a broad base of researchers and practitioners on live legislative files, grading the evidence against the EU's own standards, and publishing the results as open, reusable resources: alternative impact assessments, independent evaluations, and the broader evidence base they require. These outputs will be delivered in the format and at the point in the legislative process at which they can still change the file.

Current debates about the Digital Omnibus, or the Digital Fitness Check open a window of opportunity to discuss the overall state of Europe’s digital rulebook. A university is the right place for this work. Scrutiny of how laws are made is only usable if the institution producing it is not tied to a funder, an industry, or a political interest that has a position on the file. Therefore, the Better Regulation Hub is incubated at the TUM Think Tank to further develop, test and refine our approach.

How we work

We start from the public record: For each file, we pull together what already exists – consultation responses, position papers, academic work, enforcement experience – into a single working dossier the sprint participants can build on.

We convene broadly: Sprint groups bring together supervisory authorities, practitioners, civil society, industry and researchers, and we aim for diversity across sectors, disciplines and member states. Who is in the room shapes what comes out of it, so we treat composition as part of the method.

We work to establish(ed) standards: Graded evidence, an explicit baseline, and named trade-offs for each policy option – drawing on the Commission's own Better Regulation Toolbox, and on what we think it misses.

We do not stop at critique: Each sprint produces findings in a form that can be picked up directly, and where a group divides we set out the competing options and their trade-offs rather than forcing consensus.

We work in the open: Our outputs, criteria and evidence are published, our reasoning is traceable to sources, and our funding is disclosed. Alongside the finished work, we publish field notes on our own process – including what we are still unsure about – so that the standards we build for others can be applied to us.

We are non-partisan: We do not advocate for a particular outcome, party position or ideology. We work to ensure that decision-makers see the evidence, the alternatives, and the trade-offs before they decide.