Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. ELECTIONS: RELIEF IN PORTUGAL, POPULARITY TESTS AHEAD ELSEWHERE Last Sunday, Portugal gave everyone in Europe a sigh of relief as centre-left António José Seguro won the presidency by a wide margin over far-right leader André Ventura. The relief is real, even if Ventura still got 33% of the votes, cementing his party Chega as a long-term player rather than a passing protest. Elsewhere, politicians in the Netherlands are campaigning for local elections on 18 March, which risk being turned in a stress test of the new government minority government to be installed in two weeks. France, meanwhile, has municipal elections on 15 and 22 March which will give a first hint of the Rassemblement national’s chances of seeing Marine Le Pen…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. THE ONLY WAY IS UP FOR DRAGHI AND LETTA All eyes are on two former Italian Prime Ministers next week, as they will address EU government leaders at a special Summit at Alden Biesen castle, on the Flemish countryside. More than a year after the Draghi and Letta reports on competitiveness and the single market, national leaders are going to hear on Thursday that the funding gap to address Europe's green, digital and defence needs is much bigger than the 800 billion a year presented before. It is a public secret that Draghi is frustrated at the lack of progress on his recommendations, with only 10% of his report implemented according to the Draghi Observatory. Von der Leyen has used a…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. THE RETURN OF THE WARBORN Better Regulation ‐‐ the favourite topic of our weekly review. It's been a while since we last heard from regulatory fitness poster child Jörgen Warborn as he was busy getting his latest non-legislative report on Better Law-Making across the finish line. We have to be honest: after the ugly burden reduction sprint in last year's Omnibus I deal, the report voted this week is a refreshing marathon of sensible Better Regulation statements. The Parliament "strongly regrets that the Commission is increasingly failing to carry out impact assessment". These assessments must consider not just costs, but also social, economic and environmental impacts. And any further burden reduction measures should also come with an ex-post evaluation, cost-benefit analysis…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. VON DER LEYEN SLAPPED IN THE FACE ON TRADE DEALS The Parliament’s fourth try to adopt a motion of censure against Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission failed as expected: with only 165 votes in favour and 390 against, it fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to dismiss the College. The motion, led by the far-right Patriots, was presented as a protest against the Commission's management of the EU-Mercosur agreement. However, the more significant blow to von der Leyen’s authority had already been delivered earlier in the week: MEPs decided to delay the vote on the EU-U.S. trade agreement, and voted to refer Mercosur to the Court of Justice, delaying its final adoption by up to two years. To add…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. PARLIAMENT STRIKES FIRST IN ECB WAR OF SUCCESSION Parliament has the European Central Bank on its mind. While Trump is trying to find a way to take the printing press away from his central bankers and force them to define the interest rates that he appreciates, MEPs still believe in soft power to nudge the ECB in line with their policies. In a report adopted this week, they welcome the independence of the ECB, stress the importance of physical cash, and suggest to take a cautious approach for setting interest rates to avoid overshooting. The political fork in the road on how agile interest rate policy should be is also reflected in the appointment of a new ECB Vice-President, a decision…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. THE POLITICAL MEETING THAT WASN'T Brussels observers described it as a 'political meeting' of EU agriculture ministers on EU food security and sovereignty, but nobody bought it. Behind the talk of farm budgets and 'listening to rural voices', the real topic was the deadlocked EU-Mercosur trade agreement and whether the Commission could secure its approval before a key Coreper meeting on Friday. So, the Commission sent its best negotiators to the meeting: Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Agriculture Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who were armed with promises of 'safeguards' and 'flexibility'. The party poopers? France and Poland, who warned that the deal could open the door to unfair competition and weaken Europe’s farming standards. Meanwhile, Italy is drifting towards a yes after…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. MERCOSUR: FARMERS 1 - FREE TRADE 0 25 years of political negotiations, 7,000 farmers taking to the streets of Brussels, and still no sign of this saga ending. As EU leaders prepared for a pivotal summit, thousands of farmers took to the streets to make their concerns heard. Protesters surrounded EU institutions to denounce a deal that they fear will allow cheaper beef, soy, and agricultural imports from South America into the EU. Inside the European Council, divisions were just as visible. While Germany and the Commission pushed hard for ratification, France, Poland and Italy successfully called for a delay. Despite last-minute safeguards and a €1 billion support fund promised by the Commission, member states appear increasingly uneasy. Together with the…

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…

Welcome to Better Europe's weekly update on EU Affairs. OMNIBUS IS MALADMINISTRATION Governing by omnibus is maladministration. You’ve heard it here before, but now the European Ombudswoman formally agrees in her damning conclusions on the Commission’s approach to deregulation. In her view, the first Omnibus package and two other laws were not just rushed; the Commission also crossed the line into maladministration, failing to meet the basic standards of law-making required under the Treaties. The Commission made a mistake by skipping impact assessments, limiting public consultation to industry mostly, and ignoring the climate consistency check required since 2021 under the EU’s own Climate Law. Does this stop Omnibus I? No, but it hurts the Commission’s image of a neutral evidence-based broker in the EU’s legislative process. It’s clear that Ursula…