Leftist politicians and green activists are panicking in Brussels as the EU Commission is set to publish its ‘Competitiveness Compass,’ which will include a set of reforms aiming to simplify rules in the EU’s overregulated private sectors to boost productivity, including those ensuring compliance with environmental and climate regulations.
But while slashing from the mountain of red tape accumulated during von der Leyen’s first mandate was much needed, reducing paperwork and delaying some of the new requirements will do next to nothing to save European economies from the disastrous consequences of the Green Deal.
The truth is that von der Leyen’s Commission is using this strategy of “simplification, not deregulation” as a smokescreen that allows for the continuation of harmful climate policies while diffusing public anger—at least for the time being.
What will be cut?
The so-called “omnibus” legislation, a key component of the Compass, is promised to be an “unprecedented simplification effort” to streamline the rulebook on how companies in the EU report compliance with environmental regulations.
The changes will touch on some of the most recent regulations introduced by the Commission in the last mandate, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which require companies to collect and share data, among others, on their carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy usage, and even how much they and their global suppliers respect human rights and provide acceptable labor conditions.
The cost of complying with these requirements—just proving that you comply with climate regulations—could be astronomical, estimated to be over €800,000 in the first two years for an average mid-sized company.
That’s why the Commission budged after Draghi’s damning competitiveness report was published last year and promised to make it easier by delaying the implementation of these two while simultaneously easing the reporting rules.
The EU executive says this will allow companies to focus on growth and innovation instead of being bogged down with paperwork and left behind by more freely operating global competitors.
And what will stay?
While the Greens and others on the left are terrified that cutting these requirements will effectively allow companies to get away with environmental non-compliance, the EU Commission chief keeps insisting that simplification does not mean deregulation.
What this effectively means is that the EU’s green and climate requirements stay in effect, but ensuring compliance will be less costly and obtrusive, especially for small and mid-sized companies.
In fact, the Commission acts like it’s giving the struggling farmers and industries everything they asked for while simultaneously admitting that the goal is not to slash but to keep the Green Deal with its truly problematic elements, like the unrealistic and redundant decarbonization targets.
“The importance of simplifying EU rules is widely recognized across political lines,” a Commission spokesman said recently, trying to explain to the left that what Brussels is doing is the opposite of rolling back climate policies by saying that simplification was “crucial to achieving the European Green Deal’s ambitious goals.”
A call to arms from the Right
The Right, however, cannot be fooled into accepting these sham concessions so easily. The national-conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in the EU Parliament published an open letter on Tuesday, January 28th, in which it called for the suspension of the entire Green Deal to allow for a comprehensive re-evaluation of its objectives and applications.
The Patriots argued that this was necessary not only to give Europe a chance to address its shortcomings in competitiveness but also from a clear democratic perspective.
The composition of the EU Parliament, as well as many governments, has shifted considerably to the right since the ‘green wave’ of 2019, and citizens cannot be denied having a voice in the discussion of the basics of the Green Deal—something that’s set to define Europe’s future for decades to come.
This approach is all the more justified by recent revelations that the Green Deal wasn’t adopted in a truly democratic fashion in the beginning either, with the EU Commission paying hundreds of thousands from taxpayer funds to environmental lobbies to promote it among the citizens and politicians—possibly illegally.
The Patriots, therefore, appealed to the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) to join the three conservative blocs (PfE, ECR, ESN) in an “alternative majority” to stop the Green Deal before it’s too late.
