“This EU Commission machine just keeps going on and on and on,” said Merz at a September business event in Cologne. “Let me put it in somewhat vivid and figurative terms: We need to throw a spanner in the works of this machine in Brussels now, so that it stops.”
A proposal in an earlier draft of the conservative strategy paper went even further than the latest version, threatening the EU’s purse strings by making member countries’ budget contributions conditional on the Commission’s success in cutting regulation. That proposal — which was likely deemed too radical — has since been dropped.
For its part, the EU’s executive arm has attempted to cut back on regulations by putting forward a series of omnibus packages meant to simplify existing laws, especially regarding the Commission’s Green Deal. However, the German conservatives argue those measures are far from enough.
Von der Leyen already clashed with capitals over cutting red tape ahead of the February EU summit in Alden Biesen. After Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz blamed Brussels’ regulations for the EU’s poor economic performance, the Commission president pointed the finger back at the member countries instead.
“We must also look at the national level, there is too much gold-plating — the extra layers of national legislation that just make businesses’ lives harder and create new barriers in our single market,” she said at the time.
But according to the conservatives’ draft strategy paper from Thursday, these Commission initiatives are thus far “unsatisfactory in terms of both scope and speed.”