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Why is the Commission taking a step back to look at the digital rulebook now?
Over the past decade, the European Union has built an extensive digital rulebook. From data protection and cybersecurity to online platforms, artificial intelligence and data governance, EU digital regulation has expanded both in scope and ambition. This framework has helped shape a fair digital single market and set high standards for the protection of fundamental rights. It has also become increasingly complex.
Against this backdrop, the European Commission has launched a Digital Fitness Check, a broad evaluation of how EU digital rules interact in practice and how their cumulative effects are experienced by businesses, public authorities and individuals. The initiative is closely linked to the Commission’s wider simplification agenda and to the competitiveness concerns highlighted in recent policy debates, including the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness.
The message from the Commission is not that digital regulation has failed, but that the system needs to be examined as a whole. The key question is no longer whether individual instruments pursue legitimate objectives, but whether the overall regulatory framework remains coherent, proportionate and fit for purpose in a fast-evolving digital environment.
How does the Digital Fitness Check relate to the Digital Omnibus proposals?
The Digital Fitness Check sits alongside, but should not be confused with, the Digital Omnibus proposals presented by the Commission in November 2025. The Omnibus initiatives focus on targeted amendments and consolidation measures, including reporting simplifications, governance adjustments and selected recalibrations in areas such as data, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
These proposals are an important part of the simplification agenda and address concrete operational frictions. At the same time, they are not designed to provide a comprehensive answer to broader systemic questions about how the digital rulebook functions as an integrated whole. That is the role of the Fitness Check.
Seen together, these initiatives form a sequence with the Fitness Check aiming to look more deeply at interactions between rules, governance structures and enforcement mechanisms, with a view to identifying remaining gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies. Both tracks are complementary and understanding how they connect is essential for anyone operating across multiple areas of EU digital regulation.
In parallel, the EDPB and the EDPS have adopted their joint opinion on the Commission’s Digital Omnibus proposal at the EDPB Plenary.
Why has cooperation between regulators become such a central issue?
One of the most striking features of the current digital regulatory landscape is the number of authorities involved. Data protection authorities, competition authorities, consumer protection bodies, telecoms regulators, cybersecurity agencies and newly established digital regulators all play a role. At EU level, this is mirrored by a growing number of boards, networks and coordination forums.
Discussions at the recent Digital Clearinghouse 2.0 event made clear that cooperation between regulators has become a determining factor for the effectiveness and credibility of EU digital regulation. Participants from across institutions and member states broadly agreed on the diagnosis. Digital issues cut across traditional regulatory boundaries, and enforcement that remains confined to sectoral or legal silos risks producing inconsistent outcomes and unnecessary burdens.
Despite this high level analysis, the debate was notably pragmatic with speakers focusing on how cooperation can work in practice. Information sharing, early coordination, mutual understanding of enforcement tools and the ability to read across legal regimes were recurring themes. Nor was the debate purely theoretical: examples of successful cooperation platforms from the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland were shown, which illustrate that meaningful cooperation often develops incrementally, through joint work on concrete cases or themes, rather than through formal structures alone.
What exactly is the Commission asking stakeholders to contribute?
The call for evidence accompanying the Digital Fitness Check is explicit about its focus. The Commission is seeking stakeholder views and practical experience on how EU digital rules work together and on their cumulative impact. This includes, in particular, evidence relating to overlaps, duplications, inconsistencies and governance challenges.
Importantly, the scope of the Fitness Check goes beyond the text of individual legal instruments. It also covers how rules are implemented and supervised, how authorities cooperate and how guidance, tools and practices contribute to or detract from legal clarity.
This framing reflects a broader shift in EU regulatory thinking, influenced by the Draghi and Letta reports, towards a more systemic understanding of competitiveness. The underlying question is how to preserve high standards of protection while ensuring that the regulatory system remains workable and predictable for those subject to it.
Why does this matter for businesses operating in the EU digital economy?
For many organisations, the challenge today is not compliance with a single digital regulation, but managing multiple, partially overlapping regimes at the same time. This is particularly true for companies operating across borders or across different segments of the digital value chain.
In practice, reporting obligations under different instruments may be triggered by the same incident. Similar concepts may be defined slightly differently across legal frameworks. Enforcement timelines and procedural expectations may not align. Even where each rule makes sense in isolation, the combined effect can generate uncertainty, delay and cost.
The Fitness Check provides an opportunity to make these dynamics visible in a structured way. From a business perspective, this is not about challenging the objectives of EU digital regulation. It is about providing feedback to the EU regulators on how the system functions and where adjustments or better coordination could improve efficiency without undermining core protections.
What kind of input is likely to be most useful?
Previous evaluations suggest that the most impactful contributions are those that are concrete and grounded in practice. The Commission is not asking for abstract policy positions or sectoral advocacy. It is asking for evidence of how different rules interact in real scenarios.
Examples that illustrate cumulative impact across legal regimes, or that highlight governance and coordination challenges, are particularly relevant. So too are examples of good practices that have reduced administrative burden or improved legal clarity and could be scaled more widely.
Why timing matters
The consultation on the Digital Fitness Check runs until 11 March 2026. This is an early stage in what is expected to be a multi year evaluation process, with further targeted consultations and implementation dialogues planned.
Early input plays a significant role in shaping how issues are framed and prioritised. It helps determine which interactions between rules are examined in more depth and which governance questions are brought to the fore. From that perspective, participation is less about volume and more about relevance and quality.
A moment to engage with the system, not just react to it
The EU digital rulebook will continue to evolve. New technologies, new business models and new societal expectations will keep testing their limits. The Digital Fitness Check reflects a recognition that maintaining an effective regulatory framework requires not only new rules, but also reflection on how existing ones work together.
For businesses and other stakeholders, this is an opportunity to contribute constructively to that reflection. Doing so requires stepping back from individual compliance questions and considering the system as a whole. It also requires a careful balance between critical insight and respect for the institutional and political context in which EU digital regulation operates.
Timelex has published separate analyses on the Digital Omnibus proposals, which we link here and here for readers seeking a deeper dive into those initiatives. For those interested in the Digital Fitness Check itself, the consultation deadline of 11 March 2026 is a key date to keep in mind.
As attention increasingly shifts from rulemaking to implementation and enforcement, the outcomes of the Digital Fitness Check are likely to shape the practical operation of EU digital regulation for years to come.
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