Good morning,

Welcome to Ghent.

Some of you surely remember the last time the Directors of better regulation met in Ghent. We were writing the Mandelkern report at that time, or as some people still say, “the bible”…

In addition to the fact that we had lots of fun writing the report, it was the starting point of a new era in regulation. Countries started to create impact assessments, to develop other forms of consultation, to work out simplification programs, … A set of new regulatory instruments was born.

The Mandelkern report was published at the right time. A time when we all felt that we could do things differently, that we could make a change in how regulation was made and implemented.

Now, almost 10 years later, we are here in Ghent again. And things have changed. The world has become even more complex. And so have the rules.

First, regulation had to be good, then it had to be better. Now it needs to be smart. The regulatory instruments that once were designed to make rules more transparent, clear and understandable, have become complex tools themselves. Take the European impact assessment for example: it takes you almost a whole day to read the guidelines to use it.

National and European simplification programmes we see that they do not always connect with reality, that measuring systems and exercises are not always good examples of pragmatism.

Today we are again at a turning point.

I am convinced that there is a limit to complexity and that we have to go back to the very core of things again. That we have to look for small scale solutions to real problems and new ways to deal with existing mechanisms.

We invited TOM, ELKE, ISABELLE and WIM to this conference. None of them has to do with government or public administration.

Each of them are real people with a real business. Each of them will tell us a story, a story about their passion and their dreams, a story about how they used their creativity in finding human scale solutions for the complex reality they are working with every day. Thank you, TOM, ELKE, ISABELLE and WIM, for accepting our invitation to speak at this conference.

We hope that these stories will inspire you. That they will inspire you to come up with good, better and who even smart solutions for citizens and businesses. Solutions that restore confidence in government and stimulate entrepreneurs to do good business.

Let’s take this momentum.

Let’s take action.

Let’s work towards human scale solutions.

I hope you enjoy this conference.