'Brussels goes all-in on competitiveness with sweeping deregulation push’ 6 August 2025

Europe is currently rolling back a wide range of its most ambitious agricultural, climate, and digital laws. The EU Competitiveness Compass, published in January, set out a roadmap for simplification. The goal, according to the commission, is to “nurture Europe’s innate strengths, harness its resources and remove the barriers at European and national level.” “Europe must be the place where tomorrow’s technologies, services, and clean products are invented, manufactured and marketed, as we stay the course to climate neutrality,” the document reads. Since then, the EU has presented six so-called ‘Omnibus’ simplification packages filled with revisions to reduce the number of rules for businesses and sectors.

The first Omnibus package targets four interlinked EU Green Deal laws (which all have long and cumbersome names): the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the EU’s green taxonomy regulation, and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CSDDD, proposed after the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, was meant to make big companies accountable for human and environmental harm in their global supply chains. It finally passed in 2024 after a decade of wrangling but hasn’t yet entered into force. Still, it's first in line for rollback: the EU Commission, European Parliament and member states all want to narrow its scope to only the largest firms (1,000, 3,000 or even 5,000 employees, respectively), scrap the obligation to adopt climate transition plans, and remove civil liability clauses that would set clear legal standards for corporate accountability across the EU.

…Civil rights groups and the EU Ombudsman have challenged the need to delay and narrow sustainability rules without adequate transparency or consultation. And legal challenges are still looming. Top economists have also pushed back. “This proposal betrays the EU’s commitment to human rights and sustainability and would do little to prevent human rights and environmental harm in supply chains,” said Hélène de Rengervé from Human Rights Watch…With less than a month before key provisions of the AI Act take effect, pressure is building to delay its implementation. Tech firms like Google, Meta and Mistral, backed by several member states, say the lack of guidance and missing technical standards make compliance impossible.