Listen: Will the green deal survive the simplification effort? 

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.

EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.

Find the full transcript below:

One by one, the flagship laws of the EU’s Green Deal are being put through a “simplification” process — which, more often than not, ends up looking a lot like deregulation.

So, will the Green Deal survive the push for competitiveness?

In 2021, the European Commission unveiled more than a dozen legislative proposals designed to put the EU on track toward decarbonisation.

The Green Deal set a clear objective: the European Union must reach carbon neutrality by 2050 — meaning it can’t emit more greenhouse gases than it can absorb.

At the time, it was about getting to work — cutting emissions across every sector.

Transport, heating, imports — everything was on the table.

But a lot has changed since then. The EU’s competitiveness has been slipping, and fast. Companies are relocating to places with fewer constraints, and simpler rules.

So for the past two years, EU member states — after having voted through all the Green Deal laws — have been asking the European Commission to simplify them.

The result? The so-called “omnibus” packages prepared by the Commission. Agriculture, defense, energy, chemicals — nothing is off-limits. And since early last year, the Commission has been regularly accused of watering down its own legislation.

Is that really the case?

A number of laws have been hit by this wave of simplification. Let’s take a few examples.

First, the regulation banning products linked to deforestation. There were calls to scrap it entirely, but the Commission held the line — and kept its level of ambition.

The main change? It was postponed, and leather was removed from the list of covered products. According to several NGOs, that’s a gift to the luxury industry.

Another example: the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM — essentially a carbon tax on certain imports.

This one has been controversial for years. Recently, a group of EU countries pushed to exclude fertilisers from the mechanism. So far, the Commission is holding firm.

In the same vein, rules aimed at cutting methane emissions are also under pressure — from gas lobby groups and several member states, who want to ease some of the reduction requirements. Again, for now, the Commission is trying to preserve the ambition of the law.

So there is some good news for the climate.

But other pieces of legislation haven’t survived the trimming.

Take the Due Diligence Directive for companies. In 2024, the EU adopted rules requiring the largest companies to monitor human rights and environmental impacts across their supply chains.

But the companies affected pushed hard to reopen and weaken the law.

And they got results. Now, companies covered by the directive — those with more than €1.5bn in annual turnover — are no longer required to have a climate transition plan. We’re talking about major groups like TotalEnergies, Shell, Volkswagen, Unilever, or Carrefour.

Finally, one last flagship measure: the planned phase-out of new combustion engine cars by 2035.

Same pattern here. After years of pressure, the Commission backtracked. It proposed allowing carmakers to keep producing a small share of combustion-engine vehicles after 2035 — up to 10 percent of their fleet.

There’s a condition, though: the emissions from those vehicles would need to be offset during production, for example by using so-called “green” European steel.

Some see this as a serious environmental setback. Others call it pragmatic.

So where does that leave us?

In short, the European Commission would like to stick to its climate goals — but it can’t ignore the growing calls for deregulation, many of which are coming from EU member states themselves.

Especially at a time when populist movements are gaining ground across the continent.

In the short term, the EU may not have much choice but to loosen some of its rules. 

And the so-called “first mover advantage” on climate — once a strength of the European Commission — doesn’t carry the same weight in a world where the climate transition is slipping down the priority list.