\u201cThis EU Commission machine just keeps going on and on and on,\u201d said Merz at a September business event in Cologne. \u201cLet me put it in somewhat vivid and figurative terms: We need to throw a spanner in the works of this machine in Brussels now, so that it stops.\u201d<\/p>\n
A proposal in an earlier draft of the conservative strategy paper went even further than the latest version, threatening the EU\u2019s purse strings by making member countries\u2019 budget contributions conditional on the Commission\u2019s success in cutting regulation. That proposal \u2014 which was likely deemed too radical \u2014\u00a0has since been dropped.<\/p>\n
For its part, the EU\u2019s executive arm has attempted to cut back on regulations by putting forward a series of omnibus packages meant to simplify existing laws, especially regarding the Commission\u2019s Green Deal. However, the German conservatives argue those measures are far from enough.<\/p>\n
Von der Leyen already clashed with capitals over cutting red tape ahead of the February EU summit in Alden Biesen. After Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz blamed Brussels\u2019 regulations for the EU\u2019s poor economic performance, the Commission president pointed the finger back at the member countries instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must also look at the national level, there is too much gold-plating \u2014 the extra layers of national legislation that just make businesses\u2019 lives harder and create new barriers in our single market,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n
But according to the conservatives\u2019 draft strategy paper from Thursday, these Commission initiatives are thus far \u201cunsatisfactory in terms of both scope and speed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis EU Commission machine just keeps going on and on and on,\u201d said Merz at a September business…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[309,7629,1607,393,5,689,4733,4734,1019,2379],"class_list":{"0":"post-7724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-competitiveness","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-growth","14":"tag-omnibus","15":"tag-regulation","16":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","17":"tag-war-in-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}