WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE EU - euobserver daily - Wednesday 28 June 2025.

 

Good morning,

It’s been remarkable to watch how much energy Brussels is spending to dismantle its own Green Deal.

It seems not that long ago that it inspired Frans Timmermans to channel John F. Kennedy’s ‘man on the moon’ speech which was, I don’t know, sort of inspiring? 

But those days are definitely gone. Since February, the commission has launched four so-called omnibus packages, each aimed at simplifying EU law. 

In practice, they’ve become a vehicle for environmental deregulation, from farming and industrial emissions to finance. Some of the pieces of legislation form the heart of the EU's Green Deal.

We have focused on the commission’s efforts to roll back corporate transparency and accountability rules (CSRD) and due diligence legislation (CSDDD). Rules meant to prevent harm to people and the planet across corporate supply chains. But they’re new and complex, and ever since Draghi called them “burdensome” in his competitiveness report, the commission has moved heaven and earth to roll them back.

Today, ambassadors from EU countries meet to “receive guidance” on how far to go in weakening the rules. In parliament a true shitstorm is brewing ahead of a vote in July, with the economy and environment committees filing over 1,000 amendments in the past week, many of them miles apart. 

A potential final deal in October, resembling the current council and commission positions, would mean that the scope of green reporting would only apply to companies with more than 1,000 employees (rather than 250), in effect reducing the scope of the legislation by 80 percent (but that's not all). 

That’s a lot of political energy spent dismantling rules no one’s even really tried yet. 

Maybe for this reason, it's been difficult to find people who are happy with the way the omnibus has been rolled out. 

Off the record, sources described the omnibus process to EUobserver as “completely deranged” — a “bonkers proposal that doesn’t address the actual problems at all,” pushed through with no space for analysis. “This isn’t about good policy anymore,” another source said. “It’s pure power-hungry politics.” 

Sure, Europe’s biggest party, the EPP, seems happy. It chairs the legal affairs committee, which oversees the parliament’s position, and controls the key rapporteurs in both the environment and economy committees. 

Ursula von der Leyen, Poland's council presidency, and the largest member states are all dominated by EPP politicians or their liberal and far-right fellow travellers, are all critical of existing green rules.

But last week, more than 100 economists warned against gutting the CSRD and CSDDD, and polling suggests firms like the omnibus a lot less than existing sustainability rules. 

Professor Scott Marcus, who was invited by the parliament's legal committee to share findings of the commission's omnibus proposal last week, told MEPs that the process was "so flawed that it’s hard to even assess the substance properly."

He also deplored the commission’s decision to rush through the simplification efforts without doing a cost-benefit analysis. 

While much attention has been put on how “burdensome” green reporting rules are, the benefits "have been completely ignored,” he said. 

And it's hard to measure the burden of costs anyway. Since most companies have barely used CSRD and have no experience at all with CSDDD, estimating costs now is “like tapping in the dark,” one expert told EUobserver.

– Wester van Gaal, green economy journalist

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