POLICY BRIEF Brigitte Pircher Rebalancing EU Regulation: Progressive responses to the deregulation push For nearly three decades, the European Commission has been pursuing the so-called Better Regulation agenda. At present, however, we are entering an era in which simplification is being given priority over essen­tial protections, with a growing risk that key labour and environmental standards— which help ensure protection for workers and the environment worldwide — will be weakened or dismantled. While originally in­tended to simplify complex legislation, the agenda has been increasingly shifted towards serving business interests. Under President Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission, this shift has accelerated: regulations are now routinely portrayed as burdensome, especially when they entail costs for companies. In early 2025, the Commission introduced the“Omnibus” package to simplify EU rules and boost competitiveness. This in­cludes an at least 25% reduction of administrative bur ­dens and reporting obligations for companies and 35% for small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs), as well as the suspension of several legislative initiatives such as due diligence, corporate sustainability report­ing, and EU taxonomy. After analysing these policies, this policy brief issues an urgent call for a rebalancing of the Better Regulation agenda to safeguard core so­cial and environmental protections against an increas­ingly one-sided push for deregulation. The politics of Better Regulation: Tracing Europe’s shift from simplification to deregulation The EU’s Better Regulation agenda was conceived in the early 1990s as a response to growing concerns about the complexity and technical nature of EU legis­lation. Its original goal was to make legal texts clearer, simpler, and more accessible to citizens and stakehold­ers alike 1 . By the late 1990s, however, the political fram ­ing began to shift: legislation was no longer seen mere­ly as too complex, but as a barrier to business, particu­larly for SMEs. This change in narrative— supported by a“growing call from business”— paved the way for de­regulatory initiatives such as SLIM and BEST, both fo­cused on reducing regulatory burdens 2 . The 2001 White Paper and the 2002 Action Plan further institutionalised this volte face, moving the EU’s agenda above and beyond simplification in the direction of a deregulatory mandate. The creation of the High-Level Group on Administrative Burdens in 2007— known as the Stoiber Group— marks this turning point. It actively promoted reporting exemptions and streamlined super­vision for SMEs, but has also faced sustained criticism for its close alignment with corporate interests. The Rebalancing EU Regulation 1