The European Commission on Thursday unveiled its long-awaited “Red Tape Reducer,” a single consolidated application form that, according to its own 400-page impact assessment, will replace 47 existing bureaucratic forms, streamline interaction with EU institutions, and save the average European business, in the Commission’s own words, “approximately zero minutes per annum.”

The form, which runs to 9,014 pages in its printed edition and arrives in a box weighing 6.8 kilograms, was presented at a press conference by Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, who described it as “a historic simplification” and a “single front door” for citizens and businesses seeking relief from European bureaucracy.

“Before today, if you wanted to apply for less red tape, you had to fill in 47 different forms, in 24 languages, addressed to 11 different directorates-general,” Ms. Virkkunen said. “Now, you fill in one form. It is 9,000 pages long. This is progress. We have measured it.”

The single front door, which is also a wall

The Red Tape Reducer, formally known as Form EU/RR/2026/001, Application for Reduction of Administrative Burden (Consolidated), must be completed in triplicate, signed in wet ink on page 8,412, and submitted in person to a mailbox in the Berlaymont that, the Commission concedes, “is checked annually, around August, when someone remembers.”

“We cannot make bureaucracy smaller. We can only make it one shape. This is the one shape. It is large. We are sorry. But it is, technically, one shape.” Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen

Business groups across the bloc were unimpressed. BusinessEurope, the main employer federation, issued a statement calling the form “a courageous step sideways,” while the European SME United described it as “a 6.8-kilogram apology.”

One official, one afternoon, one page

This newspaper attempted to complete page 1 of the form, which asks the applicant to classify their enterprise using a 14-digit code drawn from a separate annex that the Commission has not yet published. After ninety minutes, we were unable to determine whether this newspaper is, for the purposes of the form, a business, a public body, or, as one helpful footnote suggested, “an other.”

The Commission has committed to reviewing the Red Tape Reducer in 2028. The review, a spokeswoman confirmed, will be conducted via a form.