Eleven European Union member states, among them three of the bloc’s largest economies, Germany, Italy and Poland, are calling on Brussels to stop producing new laws for twelve months and spend the year clearing up the ones it already has.
The proposal, set out in a discussion paper seen by POLITICO and led by Austria, has been signed by Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Portugal and Hungary. Austria’s Europe Minister, Claudia Bauer, described the plan as a “year of simplification”.
“We can’t go on tabling new legislative proposals when existing rules have not been fully implemented,” Bauer told Brussels Playbook.
Her argument is about sequencing. The European Commission is already producing packages of red tape cuts, known in Brussels as omnibuses, that unpick or soften rules already on the statute book. Bauer says that treats the symptom rather than the cause.
“What we are doing now is mostly ex-post simplification,” she said. “We fully support the Commission’s omnibus packages but it cannot become the standard that we have new legislation and then a whole string of other acts to simplify it. Simplification should start before legislation is adopted.”
Under the plan, every proposed law would face an assessment of its suitability and of whether it helps or harms economic competitiveness. All new regulations would be reviewed every five years.
A draft of the paper puts it plainly. The effort should not be seen as deregulation, it says, but as “an exercise in legislative deep-cleaning”. Bauer reached for a lighter line to make the same point. “To quote Elvis Presley, we need a little less conversation and a little more action.”
A budget fight and an industrial crisis
The push comes as the EU negotiates its next long term budget, covering 2028 to 2034, and Austria has spent much of the year pressing for deeper cuts in spending rather than increases.
The complaint also echoes Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on European competitiveness, which identified regulation as a brake on innovation and growth. What is different now is who is doing the talking. This is not a think tank, a trade association or a lobbying firm. It is more than a third of the EU’s member states, and it includes the bloc’s industrial heartland.
The backdrop is an industrial base under strain. European vehicle production has fallen by about 20 to 25 per cent since 2017, according to the Financial Times, and around a third of the continent’s car making capacity is judged surplus to requirement. Volkswagen has just dropped out of the Euro Stoxx 50 for the first time in 15 years. The EU’s industry commissioner, Stéphane Séjourné, has warned that the automotive sector is operating below capacity and that the risk of mass layoffs is rising. Steel and other energy intensive manufacturers face pressures of their own.
For manufacturers already under pressure, the argument is that regulatory uncertainty carries a cost of its own, landing on factory floors that are already fighting for survival.
For Britain, outside the EU since 2020 but still selling into it on a large scale, the direction matters too. EU rules shape the terms on which British exporters reach their biggest market, and a Brussels that produces less law and enforces what it has would change those terms. The same argument about regulatory weight is being had in Westminster.
Bauer framed the push as housekeeping rather than deregulation. “Such an effort should not be viewed as deregulation,” the draft paper reads.
Great British PAC reaction
Steve Wright of Great British PAC said:
“The striking takeaway of this statement is that these 11 countries represent over half the population of the EU, telling the bureaucrats in Brussels that they are bad at their jobs, that their laws are having a negative impact on their economies, and them doing nothing at all would be more positive for Europeans. Difficult to understate just how damaging this message is to the EU agenda and the ever closer union
Eleven governments have now said in writing that Europe needs a pause from new legislation to deal with the rules already on its books. What follows will show whether Brussels treats that as a warning or an inconvenience.
