Policy Brief: Rebalancing EU Regulation

Under the von der Leyen Commission, the Better Regulation agenda has increasingly shifted towards serving business interests: regulations are now routinely portrayed as burdensome, a drag on competitiveness, and a costly obstacle for businesses.

The Better Regulation agenda has increasingly shifted towards serving business interests

In our policy brief "Rebalancing EU Regulation: Progressive responses to the deregulation push", Brigitte Pircher calls for an urgent rebalancing of the Better Regulation agenda to safeguard core social and environmental protections against an increasingly one-sided push for deregulation. To restore balance and legitimacy to the EU’s legislative processes, several concrete measures are necessary and presented in the policy brief:

• The role of the European Parliament and civil society in regulatory scrutiny must be significantly strengthened. The establishment of regulatory platforms has concentrated decision-making power in small expert groups within the Commission, which is particularly problematic in the context of regulatory offsetting.
• The approach to bundle multiple legislative revisions (Omnibus packages) reduces transparency. Reforms should be clearly disaggregated by policy area, enabling proper oversight by the European Parliament, national parliaments, and affected actors. The growing pattern of stakeholder exclusion not only weakens the quality of legislative proposals but also risks further eroding the legitimacy of the Better Regulation agenda itself.
• It is essential to ensure that simplification measures do not come at the expense of social or environmental objectives. The EU should shift its focus towards regulatory quality rather than pursuing regulatory cost reduction as a policy goal in itself.
• Progressive actors should use the current EU mandate to reclaim the political space for socially and ecologically responsible regulation. Progressives should advocate for a more nuanced approach that distinguishes between necessary public interest regulation and poorly designed administrative procedures. Upcoming EU legislation should not be seen as technocratic exercises in competitiveness but as political arenas to redefine what a competitive, social just, and resilient Europe means.