The European Commission has presented its annual Work Programme for 2027. Most notably, it aims to scale back its legislative ambitions, following increased pressure from EU member states. In October 2026, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever sent a joint letter to European Council President António Costa urging a new “emergency brake” mechanism to halt or scale back EU business regulations they view as excessively burdensome.
In its outline for the new Work Programme, the Commission boasts that “two years into its current mandate, this Commission has tabled major proposals to strengthen our competitiveness, including 12 ambitious Omnibus packages and other simplification measures. Together, these initiatives could save EUR 22.3 billion in recurrent administrative costs per year, once fully implemented.”
Now, a number of EU legislative initiatives would be withdrawn. Reports indicate the Commission intends to withdraw the Green Claims Directive, the digital services tax, a proposal to establish a common corporate tax base and head office taxation, due to the unlikelihood that these plans will receive sufficient support in the Council of EU member states. All of this is in tune with the political change of mood in the EU, which has clearly become more hostile towards left-green policies.
This is all quite something. The common corporate tax base plan was originally named “Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB)”, when it was proposed in 2011. It was withdrawn in September 2023 but survived in a different form, whereby the Commission pivoted to a new framework known as BEFIT (Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation), which aims to deliver a single rulebook for corporate tax in the EU. The latter would now also be withdrawn.
Still, some unclarity remains. There still seems to be no announcement yet that the digital services tax and the 2021 Energy Taxation Directive reform will be withdrawn. The latter was meant to change EU tax rules to ensure electricity is taxed at a lower rate than fossil fuels. A deal seems in any case very difficult among member states, some of whom would be forced to hike taxes on gasoline, diesel and natural gas due to the legislative change. The fact that there is now at least some serious discussion to put these kinds of policies on the chopping block can only be described as a common sense measure, looking at the risk of a new European energy crisis. In the same regard, it is welcome to see EU member states agreeing to delay by a year several planned monitoring rules for methane emissions linked to imports of crude oil, natural gas and coal, due to energy security concerns.
📍In a leaked draft of its 2027 Work Programme, the Commission considers withdrawing the Green Claims Directive and the Energy Taxation Directive due to deadlock in the Council. pic.twitter.com/spp7L6quGm
— Anna Hubert 🇪🇺 (@AnnaHbrt) November 3, 2026
There is still much in the EU legislative pipeline
Then the EU commission would not be the EU Commission if it were not simultaneously launching new green policy initiatives, as for example the proposal for a “Climate Resilience Law”, which aims to establish a common EU framework for climate risk assessments and resilience planning.
Also initiatives like the “Industrial Accelerator Act” (IAA) seem to be going full steam ahead. This piece of EU legislation would link eligibility for certain public procurement contracts and state support schemes to local-content requirements. In return for France agreeing to water down the EU’s de facto 2035 ban on combustion engine cars, Germany would have conceded to France that the IAA’s “Made in Europe” rules would be stricter than originally envisaged.
Earlier this year, Politico dubbed this “Industrial Accelerator Act”, which was originally named the “Industrial Decarbonization Accelerator Act”, “a climate law in disguise.” One of the elements is that it would require governments to spend their money for low-carbon materials and net-zero technologies produced in the EU. A World Trade Organisation panel already found similar “Made in US” rules illegal. The question is if more green EU protectionism and regulation are respecting the spirit of the Commission’s supposed “simplification” drive.
Similarly protectionist is the proposed “Public Procurement Act”, which the EU Commission proposed in September. This Regulation would replace three 2014 directives and give every public buyer in the EU an optional “European preference” toolbox. In this way, the EU would be turning public procurement into an instrument of industrial policy. Surely, many other countries, not least China, practise this kind of protectionism, but ultimately, the question is whether European consumers will not lose out from this.
In the same vein, there is the EU’s “food and feed safety omnibus”, which is a measure to curb pesticide use in imports. Reportedly, it may provoke another clash with trading partners like the US, Brazil, Australia and Japan.
Also at the domestic European level, the EU regulatory machine is simply steaming ahead. Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (BECA) is one such initiative, described by the EU Commission as “a political commitment to turn the tide against cancer”. Apart from the question whether the EU should have any competence over health policy, the implementation is causing quite a few policy divisions. The European People’s Party (EPP), which is the largest faction in the European Parliament, has stated there is strong opposition within the faction to certain preventive measures provided by the proposals, which the faction sees as too closely aligned with the stances of Socialists and Greens and insufficiently grounded in proportionality and scientific evidence.
These divisions will come into sharper focus during the European Parliament’s plenary debate on BECA on November 12. At the heart of the disagreement is whether the EPP can maintain its commitment to evidence-based policymaking and proportionality while navigating political pressures from both the left and right. There are also growing questions about whether Brussels is giving sufficient attention to the broader drivers of cancer and adopting a comprehensive approach to prevention. With more conservative parliamentary groups also questioning the direction of the proposals, it remains to be seen whether the EPP will seek common ground with parties to its right or maintain its traditional alliances with the Socialists and Democrats. Ultimately, the debate raises a broader question about whether EU health policy is being guided by scientific evidence or wider political and regulatory priorities.
A related piece of legislation is the EU’s Safe Hearts Plan, “the first ever EU approach to tackling cardiovascular disease”, in the words of the Commission. It aims to tackle diabetes and obesity, which caused MEPs in June to push to “improve nutrition labelling and assessment of “ultra-processed foods”, given their link to increased cancer risk.
Furthermore, another tense EU regulation which is in the pipeline is the proposed “Critical Medicines Act” (CMA), designed to tackle persistent drug shortages and reduce the EU’s heavy reliance on foreign manufacturers like China and India. Sticking points here have been proposals for joint purchasing as well as the European Parliament’s push for a mandatory redistribution mechanism, which would allow the EU to divert drug stockpiles from one member state to another during acute shortages. If this materialises into law, a justified concern – excessive dependence for certain medicines on imports – may end up leading to yet more EU centralisation.
Lack of digital policy simplification
Last but not least, there is the EU’s Digital Omnibus legislation, which is meant to simplify EU regulation in the digital sphere, where Europe is currently so badly behind. An EC proposal was proposal in November 2025 to amend legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), move cookie rules for personal data into the GDPR, fold three data laws into the Data Act and create a single channel for reporting cyber incidents and data breaches.
As anyone following EU affairs could not avoid notice, Mario Draghi unveiled his long-awaited report today. He touched upon various issues, but digital technologies in general and AI in particular stand out as a make-it-or-break-it matter. A 🧵on what you need to know. 1/10
— Luca Bertuzzi (@BertuzLuca) September 9, 2024
In his influential 2024 report on EU competitiveness, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has taken aim at GDPR, once a sacred cow in Brussels. His report lamentedthat “regulatory barriers to scaling up are particularly onerous in the tech sector, especially for young companies.” It added: “While the ambitions of the EU’s GDPR and AI act are commendable, their complexity and risk of overlaps and inconsistencies can undermine developments in the field of AI by EU industry actors”. In spoken remarks, Draghi was even harsher. He stated: “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is estimated to have reduced the profits for small tech companies by more than 15 per cent,” adding that “with this legislation, we are killing our companies.” He thereby also pointed out ever more stringent EU tech regulation in the end benefits US big tech giants, saying: “Only larger companies—which are often non-EU based—have the financial capacity and incentive to bear the costs of complying.”
Experts like Mikołaj Barczentewicz, a senior scholar of innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, have warned that EU’s “digital omnibus” simplification exercise may turn out pushing things in the wrong direction to address the concerns. In June, he wrote:
“The Digital Omnibus was supposed to make European Union data law simpler, clearer, and less allergic to reality. Instead, the Council of the European Union appears to be turning it into something more familiar: a reform that trims the statute, fattens the recitals, and hands more interpretive power to the same regulators whose maximalist readings made reform necessary in the first place.”
He thereby complained that a compromise between EU member states “deletes three of the Commission’s four principal GDPR reforms: the entity-relative personal-data test, the relocation of cookie consent into the GDPR, and the legitimate-interest basis for AI processing.”
This should serve as an illustration that it is too simplistic to blame the European Commission for EU overregulation. The EU member states are very much at the steering wheel.
In a separate comment on the Digital Omnibus, Dirk Auer, Director of Competition Policy of the International Center for Law & Economics, goes to the heart of how regulatory simplification exercises can end up making things worse. He writes:
“The ultimate risk is that of “simplexification”: legislation that is presented as simpler, but which is in reality more time-consuming, more fragmented and riddled with exceptions. By constantly adding exemptions for SMEs, small mid-caps (SMCs) or certain sector-specific practices, the EU could end up creating two separate digital law regimes, which would run counter to the risk-based approach and the objective of clarity pursued by the Commission.”
Truly, EU simplification may be like a dog chasing its tail.
