Twenty months into the EU’s campaign to cut red tape, many businesses that have been pushing for it are not impressed. Firms told Politico that the “simplification” drive is slow, expensive, and complicated.
Politico spoke to 17 companies, consultancies, and trade associations across all sectors. A common complaint was that the institution created to write the laws was not fit to reverse them.
The EU is “strong” at making rules but poor at removing them, Richard Longden of INEOS told the outlet. BusinessEurope’s Martynas Barysas said that reducing the burden is “suffocating” working-class negotiations.
Frustration is a sharp turn from late 2024, when Ursula von der Leyen promised to ease the burden and the industry rejoiced. Beginning in February 2025, the Commission presented about a dozen “omnibus” bills across defense, energy, chemicals, agriculture, and technology, promising billions in savings.
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The Commission is pushing back, calling its progress “unprecedented” and noting that the cuts require 27 member states and Parliament. It has been accusing national officials of failing to implement reforms.
Digital rules on fire
In the world of technology, the sharpest edge of this drive is the Digital Omnibus. It reopens the GDPR, the AI Act, and other digital rules in the name of competition, part of a broader effort to rewrite the European rulebook to fend off the US and China.
Parliament and the Council signed the AI Omnibus in June, narrowing the AI Act while adding a ban on nudity apps. The package slows down high-risk AI commitments, creates a new basis for training AI with personal data, and lowers the AI-literacy requirement.
That’s exactly what many of the tech industry’s deregulation has been lobbying for. Companies argued that the AI Law and GDPR were pitting European startups against more agile competitors.
No one is satisfied
However, softness does not please anyone. Privacy and civil rights groups are calling the Digital Omnibus a rollback of hard-won protections dressed up as collective bargaining rights, weakening what’s fueling the AI boom.
Meanwhile, the industry complains that cuts continue to shrink in the talks, as reporting rules are added instead of removed. Even the changes to the AI Law were interpreted by observers as a change in the process instead of the essence, so the fight produced conflict on all sides, as the previous speeches that have fallen after 12 hours have been shown.
Some firms are now seeking a temporary, stable five- to ten-year “forecasting wave” instead of more movement. Others say red tape has never been a real problem, pointing to energy costs and carbon prices instead.
A serious question
Beneath the complaints lies a real problem that the Commission will not be able to solve easily. It tries to balance the industry’s demand for fewer regulations against warnings that outsourcing harms privacy, health, and the environment.
That tension is not going away, and some argue that Europe’s edge lies in fixing the rules rather than cutting them. Whether reliable regulation is an asset or an anchor is an underlying debate in every profession.
Meanwhile, Europe stokes its own fire and satisfies the few who flock to it. The lesson from Brussels is that unwritten rules can be just as difficult, and controversial, as written ones.
