The European Commission’s marquee initiative to cut back legislation has devolved into a political slanging match – with MEPs blamed by diplomats and bureaucrats for quietly sabotaging the effort.
EU countries’ leaders are gathering in Copenhagen for a meeting on Wednesday, where German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged to make a new push to free the single market from a “thicket of regulations.”
But back in Brussels, diplomats complain that the European Parliament isn’t treating the so-called simplification push, or omnibus packages in EU speak, with the same political imperative as the Council and Commission, with the law-slashing programme a key initiative pushed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Just two weeks ago, von der Leyen launched a thinly veiled criticism of MEPs when warning that the plans “need urgent approval by the co-legislators”.
There was criticism of MEPs this week from Sweden’s Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch, who said at an industrial competitiveness meeting in Brussels that there was growing frustration with Parliament. “We now need to prove that we can do more than talk and actually walk the talk” on the simplification agenda, she said.
The influential report of von der Leyen’s economics guru, Mario Draghi, has been out for more than a year, but the EU has so far only implemented a fraction of its recommendations, which included measures aimed at simplification.
Inter-institutional fight
The Commission has proposed six of its omnibus packages this year to roll back existing legislation for the benefit of businesses, with four more covering digital, environmental, automotive and health, expected by the year’s end.
The Council created a special committee to fast-track the omnibus files, and EU diplomats are frustrated that the Parliament has not created a similar structure.
The Parliament, however, pushes back against accusations of slow-walking the legislation. “Work is at full speed and many of the omnibuses are done or about to be finalised. We are also not just going to rubberstamp,” one Parliament official said.
Several parts of the omnibus agenda, including on investment, the carbon border tax and an injunction on corporate reporting rules, have already been politically agreed by Parliament, and the other EU institutions.
Blame game
Some feel that the real criticism is targeted at the Parliament’s centre-left Socialists and Democrats group who are resisting a lightning speed haircut of EU legislation.
Aurore Lalucq, a French centre-left lawmaker who chairs the Parliament’s economics committee, rejected the criticism.
“We are elected by the European people to do our job, whether it pleases people or not,” she said. “In the trilogues, who is it who takes time, who blocks all the time, who needs to constantly consult its member states? It’s the Council.”
Bernd Lange, a Social Democrat who chairs the Parliament’s trade committee, attributed Parliament’s failure to endorse many of the packages to their “complexity” – which, he said, has presented a “serious problem” for MEPs.
The German lawmaker added that Parliament’s rapid approval of the Commission’s carbon border tax simplification shows that there is “no delay specifically from one political group” and that no new structure is needed to fast-track legislation.
“The problem is more in the mixed structure in the proposals by the Commission,” he said. Lange added that the fourth omnibus package, which focuses on small and mid-sized companies, falls under the remit of four separate parliamentary committees.
The EU’s twin company sustainability laws – one mandating sustainable behaviour from firms (CSRD) and another tackling human rights and environmental abuses in their global supply chains (CSDDD) – are at the centre of the reformists’ discontent.
EU governments are pushing to exempt all but the largest firms from their scope by setting employee thresholds at 5,000 workers, five times higher than the original law’s threshold.
Eric Maurice, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, warned that the rapidity of the red tape-cutting efforts risks undermining the omnibuses’ quality.
“The Commission rushed to present it; the Council rushed to adopt its position; the Parliament is rushing to follow the pace,” Maurice said.
He also suggested that “institutional patriotism” is ultimately behind the Brussels blame game, with each EU body having “its own idea of its own legitimacy”.
Nikolaus J. Kurmayer and Jacob Wulff Wold contributed reporting.
(vib, jp)