Revealed February 27, 2026
By Silvia Pastorelli, CIEL EU Petrochemicals Campaigner.
Till a couple of years in the past in Brussels, progress towards halting local weather chaos and environmental degradation felt doable, even when painfully gradual. At the moment, that momentum hasn’t simply stalled — it’s in reverse. We’re witnessing a gentle rollback of European Union (EU) environmental and social guidelines, some barely dry on the web page, by way of packages of legal guidelines — “omnibus proposals” — to be amended beneath the guise of “simplification.” The tide began to show in February 2024 with the Antwerp Declaration. This sign of intent, coordinated by Cefic (an EU chemical compounds foyer group consisting of main petrochemical and chemical corporations) and backed by seventy-three enterprise representatives, distilled trade calls for right into a “wishlist” targeted on prioritizing trade wants, regaining misplaced competitiveness, and, particularly, simplifying EU legal guidelines. At the moment, the variety of its supporters has ballooned to 1,300.
The proof of the Declaration’s success was how rapidly its calls for had been embraced by EU Fee President Ursula von der Leyen.
The Rise of Company Affect
Since backing the Antwerp Declaration, EU policymaking has grow to be more and more near the trade, mirroring its narrative and fulfilling its regulatory needs. Statements of European Commissioners and representatives from teams reminiscent of Cefic, Enterprise Europe, and Plastic Europe recurrently echo one another, underscoring the trade’s affect over European politics.
European Fee President Von der Leyen first made clear her intention to prioritize trade pursuits when she pledged to “make enterprise simpler and quicker in Europe” and to ship a Clear Industrial Deal throughout the first 100 days of her mandate. This mirrored an specific request of Enterprise Europe (Brussels’ largest enterprise affiliation), which, through the European elections, known as for a coverage “reboot” and for a Clear Industrial Deal throughout the first 100 days.
Because the Antwerp Declaration reached 1,000 signatures, petrochemical foyer teams reminiscent of Cefic and Plastics Europe intensified their push for a shift in EU politics, calling for a “holistic European method for an Industrial Deal” and warning of “falling competitiveness.” Collectively, they every urged the EU to acknowledge that “the way forward for Europe is made with trade” whereas demanding a discount in “pink tape” and the shortening of “excessively lengthy allowing procedures.”
The primary concrete instance of trade affect reshaping EU policymaking was the Competitiveness Compass: “This doctrine is easy and may be summed up in a single key phrase: competitiveness,” stated EU Commissioner for Trade Stéphane Séjourné. Trade leaders instantly seized the momentum as Cefic’s Director Normal famous, “The calls of just about 1,300 trade leaders […] haven’t solely been heard however are being actioned upon. Now that we’re on the highway to boosting competitiveness, let’s pace it up.”
And pace it up, the Fee did.
Dismantling EU Legal guidelines
On the primary anniversary of the Antwerp Declaration, President Von der Leyen introduced, “I’m very grateful for these dialogues [with industry] as a result of the outcomes have formed the priorities of my new Fee[. …] The Clear Industrial Deal[…] delivers on every one of many ten suggestions within the Antwerp Declaration.”
After that, the deregulation floodgates opened and omnibus proposals piled up, every aiming to chill out or reduce guidelines, successfully reducing environmental and social requirements. Unashamedly, these proposals featured lots of Enterprise Europe’s sixty-eight strategies to lighten the regulatory burden. This included amendments to the Industrial Emissions Directive and environmental influence evaluation procedures (Environmental Omnibus) and the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation (Chemical Omnibus). Even the Company Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and Company Sustainability Reporting Directive — two major trade targets — had been later included within the first Omnibus proposal and considerably watered down.
Whereas phrases reminiscent of “simplification” and “competitiveness” sound optimistic, they’re getting used to justify eradicating legal guidelines that guarantee public participation, strong environmental influence assessments, and company transparency — and folks and the surroundings are those that lose out. For months, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) sounded the alarm concerning the results of this unprecedented wave of deregulation on folks, staff, and the surroundings. The European Fee insisted the target was to not decontrol, solely to simplify. This was till Von der Leyen’s speech on the Competitiveness summit in Copenhagen, the place she made clear, “We want simplification. We want deregulation.”
EU Commissioner for Economic system and Productiveness Valdis Dombrovskis echoed this, calling simplification the “key that may unlock Europe’s full aggressive potential. […]” and describing the buildup of guidelines as an issue itself.
On the finish of 2025, the Fee introduced that greater than half of the 2026 program would give attention to simplification. Commissioner Dombrovskis confirmed this trajectory: “The tradition change that we’ve got launched throughout the Fee — putting a higher give attention to simplification and competitiveness — will even proceed.”
The Future: For All, or Only a Few?
Quick ahead to the second anniversary of the Antwerp Declaration, and we’re witnessing one of the vital profitable examples of undue company affect on policymaking because the Fee plans to “simplify” its personal lawmaking guidelines. Common conferences between corporations and the European Fee elevated all through 2025, and 2026 is about to be no completely different. Following what appears to be a now-annual custom, the Fee President dined with Enterprise Europe members and met trade representatives in Antwerp simply earlier than retreating to a Belgian fort with European leaders to debate easy methods to increase competitiveness.
These new modifications threaten to exacerbate the democratic disaster, additional silencing civil society through the legislative course of and paring again environmental influence assessments, that are important to ecosystem and human well-being, and to everybody who is determined by them.
However issues can nonetheless change; we will return to a real power and industrial transition that facilities human, social, and environmental rights. The European Fee nonetheless has the facility to reverse this development, defend very important environmental and local weather guidelines, and strengthen measures for civil society participation whereas ending the privileged entry at the moment loved by large polluters.
Doing so requires imaginative and prescient and the braveness to face as much as undue company affect and work in everybody’s curiosity, not simply of few.
