Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. SIMPLIFICATION SEASON CONTINUES Christmas comes early this year for Europe’s businesses, as the Commission this week presented its delayed Environmental Omnibus as a bold crusade against ‘administrative burden’ and, depending on whom you ask, a somewhat bolder crusade against environmental oversight. Brussels promises to save another billion euros a year by eliminating ‘unnecessary’ reporting obligations, primarily by no longer requiring companies to disclose sensitive information about chemicals, pollution or resource use. Highlights include: the deletion of the Substances of Concern in Products database, which would spare industry the inconvenience of reporting hazardous chemicals, over 38,000 livestock farms would be exempt from water and energy reporting, and environmental assessments for industrial sites, water discharges and chemical residues could be eliminated. While Commission…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. A MASTER PLAN FOR EU FINANCIAL INTEGRATION This week, the Commission launched a horizontal review of financial market infrastructure legislation, opening up a dozen of legislative files in a renewed attempt to build more integrated EU financial markets. Until last year, Brussels insiders would refer to such a package as an “Omnibus”, a concept that since this year refers to legislative proposals that deregulate while pretending to merely simplify things… so to avoid linguistic confusion, the Commission puts forward a “Master Regulation” and a “Master Directive” instead. Together, the two aim to overhaul the way that EU financial services are regulated and marketed throughout the EU, although “overhaul” is perhaps overstated. The most ambitious proposals such as mainstreaming integrated supervision, as…