Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
EU WATCHDOG SLAPS COMMISSION ON THE WRIST
In May, eight civil society organizations filed a complaint to the Ombudsman, denouncing a breach of the Commission’s own Better Regulation Guidelines with the publication of the Omnibus I proposal. What was the issue? The Commission failed to make a real impact assessment and pretty much skipped the public consultation. This week, Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho sent a letter to Ursula von der Leyen herself, asking for further clarification. Anjinho contests the Commission’s justification for bypassing the impact assessment on the grounds of unforeseen “urgency” and demands an explanation for the lack of public consultation, which significantly limited stakeholder participation in the process. However, the Ombudsman didn’t stop there; she also raised concerns about the proposal’s internal fast-tracking. The interservice consultation, where different Commission “services” can have their say during at least ten working days, was reduced to just 24 hours. Even worse, it started on a Friday evening so it closed on a Saturday evening. Pretty efficient! So, in addition to getting rid of corporate reporting and responsibility, the Commission also seems to have thrown its Better Regulation principles out with the bathwater.
MONEY TALKS 2028-2034
Described by Ursula von der Leyen as “the most ambitious budget ever proposed,” the new Multi-Annual Finance Framework presented this week is, above all, the expression of her increasingly vertical grip on power. Rumour even has it that this top-down operation was secretly orchestrated by just a few loyalists. Gone are the usual rounds of interservice consultations and input from other EU institutions. Beyond the questionable form, the content isn’t much better. The “MFF” eliminates the dedicated biodiversity envelope, absorbing it into a vague “35% environment spending target” potpourri. The LIFE program disappears into broader plan, raising fears of new greenwashing opportunities while at the same time potentially partially defunding climate NGOs. Other losers include farmers, who will see a significant drop in agriculture funding, as well as beneficiaries of the EU’s cohesion policy. The new priorities are defence, space, and digital technologies, as well as the creation of a “Draghi fund for competitiveness”. Member states are not happy either: Germany and the Netherlands have already rejected the proposal, citing domestic budget constraints as the reason for rejecting the overall increased envelope. But this is just the beginning, and negotiations will keep Brussels busy until at least 2027.
OMNIBUS SUMMER IS HERE
Tourists are starting to take over the EU area in Brussels, as politicians, civil servants and lobbyists are off to the beach to recover from Omnibus shock. Last summer turned out to be silence before the storm, when we all thought von der Leyen 2.0 would take it relatively easy on the legislative side. But the (de)regulation output in the last half year has been significant, and many decision-makers will be coming back to Brussels in September to deal both with leftovers from the last mandate as well as with more fundamental political debates about how to distribute the EU budget, how to finance the defence industry, and how far to deregulate corporate sustainability rules. And once the rainy season comes back to town, all eyes will be on the Commission’s Work Programme for 2026, to see whether the omnibus model will permanently become the new way of making laws. We do hope that Brussels returns to evidence-based policy-making, giving stakeholder and scientific input a place in politics again, but a week is long in politics these days, let alone a summer.