Welcome to Better Europe’s weekly update on EU Affairs.
FIRST OMNIBUS AGREEMENT, BUT NOT THE LAST
Habemus Omnibus! This week, Member States and the Parliament reached their first agreement on one of the Commission’s six “simplification” packages so far: Omnibus II, dedicated to the InvestEU program. The agreement increases the EU guarantee by €2.9 billion, which is expected to mobilize at least €50 billion in additional investments while claiming to reduce administrative burden for companies and national authorities. However, this is only a first step. Five other Omnibus packages are still under discussion (on defence, food and agriculture, medium-sized companies, and chemicals) and two more are pending. The new initiatives include an environmental Omnibus, expected in late 2025, which could significantly change landmarks laws such as the Empowering Consumers Directive. Meanwhile, certainly the Omnibus I negotiations are not without opposition: activists earlier this week marched from Maastricht to Brussels in three todays to protest against the deregulation wave in the EU. The NGOs warn that simplification will weaken environmental protection, social standards, and human rights and that the whole “simplification” concept is simply a cover-up for deregulation.
TRADE FIRST, FORESTS LATER
The EU’s anti-deforestation law is facing another one-year delay, surprisingly announced at the time of finalizing a major trade agreement with Indonesia. Environment Commissioner Jessica Roswall warned that the EU’s IT system will probably not be able to process the billions of messages reporting transactions, downstream obligations and small-package imports once the EUDR takes effect on 30 December this year. The timing is politically sensitive as the EU and Indonesia on the same day announced that they had concluded a “Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement” (CEPA), which opens duty-free access to the EU market for Indonesian palm oil and other strategic sectors. For Indonesia’s 2.7 million small-scale palm oil farmers, who manage 40% of the country’s plantations, the regulation is indeed a challenge, as only 8% of them have smartphones capable of running the necessary apps. However, there was a provision in the law that the EU should help producer countries to comply, except that this so far has remained a dead letter. So with a bit of sabotage here and there, and probably two years of delay, place your bets: will we see a live EUDR at all?
EU GREEN VOICE FADES AT CLIMATE WEEK
More environmental drama, as the EU toned down its language at the Climate Week that took place in New York this week. Rather than unveiling a revised 2035 climate target as required by the Paris Agreement, EU leaders presented a vague “statement of intent,” delaying concrete decisions. Why? Well something changes in EU politics, with an increasingly powerful and indifferent EPP when it comes to the EU’s climate leadership. Once a bloc that pushed China and the US to raise their game, the EU now appears hesitant and fragmented, with its agenda rewritten by conservative forces. And while President Ursula von der Leyen delivered a speech in New York that lacked substance, China moved forward, even if with baby steps, making modest renewable energy commitments. The reversal of roles was striking: the EU is no longer the climate leader it aspired to be a decade ago, leaving a worrying vacuum on the global stage.