ECR President Rob Jonkman (Member of the Executive Council of Opsterland in the Netherlands) called for the EU to be more localist and less burdensome for citizens. He made this call on behalf of the ECR during the plenary debate on "The State of the European Union: The View of Regions and Cities" that sets aspirations of regions and cities expectations for the new EU mandate.

The ECR President highlighted the mixed feelings of the ECR parliamentarians regarding the approval of the new European Commission by the European Parliament, which fundamentally resonates with "how citizens feel about the changes in the EU."

Mr Jonkman stressed two steps needed to restore the hope of citizens in the European project: "breaking with the view that more European integration in every policy area is a recipe for success, and simplifying EU legislation."

"In the ECR Group we are not big supporters of 'an ever closer union,' and definitely not in every policy domain," said Mr Jonkman.

"We agree that the EU should help local communities in dealing with complex matters such as trade, energy security, and climate change. All of them are too complicated and too costly to be left alone to national authorities. In other areas, we see the need for EU involvement too, but through tailored-made and flexible measures that do not put our authorities and communities into a straightjacket and are easily implementable," he elaborated.

Talking about the complexity of EU law, he pointed to the experiences of the Dutch knowledge centre Europa Decentraal, which assists local and regional authorities in the Netherlands by answering their questions on the interpretation of European law and legislation.

"Europa Decentraal received more than 20,000 such questions since it was established. From what I know many more have never been asked because local authorities are afraid that if they have questions, this will give an impression that they are doing something wrong. But I am quite sure that in most cases it is not the local authorities which do something wrong. It is the complexity of EU laws that causes difficulties," argued Mr Jonkman.