Rubbish, the EU is simply admitting Donald is right.
EU squares up to US with deregulation, clean tech push
Story by Ella Joyner (in Brussels)• 4h • 4 min read
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen's first term in office between 2019 and 2024 was a bona fide regulation spree. With her landmark European Green Deal, she legislated across dozens of sectors to set the European Union on track to emit "net zero" by 2050 and help avoid a worst-case scenario climate catastrophe.
But times have changed, and political priorities with them. The head of the EU's executive branch is on a deregulation drive to put European businesses on an even footing with their US and Chinese counterparts, while holding on to overall ambitious climate goals.
On Wednesday, EU officials unveiled plans to slash the bureaucratic burden on companies by rewriting several recent laws, in a move that went down poorly with environmental and rights campaigners, and even some industry voices.
Concretely, the European Commission wants to tone down the rules that businesses must follow on sustainability impact reporting and supply chain responsibility, written into several pieces of already agreed legislation. It is particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises that the EU's executive branch says it wants to relieve.
The changes, for example, will absolve around 80% of companies currently covered by the corporate sustainability reporting directive: all those with fewer than 1,000 employees. They will no longer face the strict annual reporting requirements that the law stipulates.
