EU red tape hit squad finds simplification isn’t all that simple

BRUSSELS — In early 2025, a small army of European diplomats was ordered to reopen dozens of EU laws and extinguish anything that created excessive paperwork for companies.

The mission was clear: Slash away burdensome regulations to create a more dynamic economy that can compete with the U.S. and China.

EU governments, increasingly worried by Europe’s sluggish growth, wanted it done quickly. So when they set up their red tape hit squad, they decided to distance experts from the process to prevent technical discussions from slowing down the work.

But a year and a half on, diplomats warn that simplifying EU laws could quickly turn into dangerous deregulation without the guidance of those experts — especially when the laws directly impact human health. To avoid that, they say they are relying on experts at every step of the process.

“When [EU countries] made the decision that they want to simplify, they didn’t consider the possible impact on human health, and now they are slowly realizing that,” said an EU diplomat who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely about close-door meetings.

POLITICO spoke to 12 Council officials from 10 different EU countries with direct knowledge of how the group is set up and who are working on simplification. The picture they paint is of a team under pressure to get rid of red tape at lightening speed without weakening EU laws at the expense of the environment and human health.

The health and environmental risks became clear as EU countries pored over two separate proposals to loosen complex rules on pesticides used to grow food and chemicals found in cosmetics, prompting some delegations to request detailed technical talks for the more sensitive files.

“The simplification group was not set up to deal with such technical elements,” said Lukáš Bado, a Slovakian diplomat working on agricultural policy last January, referring to the review of pesticides rules.

It speaks to the compromise that EU decision-makers are forced to find between speed and rigor as the bloc tries to get rid of excessive bureaucracy while protecting the core objectives of its rulebook.

The squad

Rolling back onerous regulations has become central to the EU’s efforts to revive its economy after businesses repeatedly complained that excessive red tape was choking them.

The European Commission presented 10 legal proposals to get it done. The proposals — known as “omnibus” packages in the EU bubble vernacular — reopen existing laws on everything from defense and investment to pollution and pesticide use and suggest major cuts to strip out any requirements deemed overly burdensome for companies.

In the Council of the EU — which represents the 27 governments in Brussels — countries appointed new diplomats to review the proposals, rather than the ones who had originally drafted laws. “For us it was very important to make sure the people in charge of deregulating aren’t the same as the people who did the regulation, because otherwise they’ll never be able to cut it,” said a second EU diplomat.

The group sits in an informal body in the Council of the EU known as the Antici Group, where diplomats work with EU ambassadors on high-stakes political topics. EU leaders have “always pleaded for more simplification but they were never heard on the terrain. So in order to work with those omnibuses, with the simplification, the leaders created their own terrain. And this terrain is called the Antici Group on Simplification,” explained a third EU diplomat.

The group has met close to 100 times since the European Commission presented its first omnibus in early 2025, according to the Council’s website. The rotating presidency of the EU Council, currently held by Cyprus, chairs the meetings.

Their work comes as many industry representatives demand that EU decision-makers get the simplification effort over with swiftly. “We welcome that Council is pushing for simplification that goes beyond the Commission’s original [omnibus] proposals” said Wolfgang Niedermark, executive management board member of the German industry association BDI.

“Companies urgently need tangible relief which the EU has so far failed to deliver. The complexity of the files should not be a reason to slow down the process but requires political prioritization,” he added.

Hurry up

The Commission promised the chopping exercise would save nearly €38 billion in annual administrative costs to the EU economy. EU leaders requested that negotiators get through all the omnibus proposals by the end of the year.

Several officials said the pace and workload is unprecedented and challenging. However, they argue the Council’s structure, while designed to prevent technical discussions from crowding the meetings in Brussels, has not prevented them from seeking expertise in national capitals when necessary.

Five of the EU diplomats that POLITICO spoke to confirmed that the group relies on constant input of national experts given the complexity of some of the files. “The experts in the capital are really those who we depend upon to a large extent to analyze and to provide the input and prepare our position,” said one of them.

Still, time constraints of the simplification timetable give little time for lengthy analysis. Three of those five diplomats said that they often only have a couple of days to get input from them ahead of the meetings, which adds pressure.

Some delegations are requesting back up from their governments to examine all the proposals. “We will have added a second representative in the simplification group in the fall given the workload and pressure on the schedule,” said a spokesperson from the French permanent representation to the EU.

The Cyprus presidency is “working diligently to advance several simplification packages,” a spokesperson for the presidency told POLITICO, adding that it had set out “an intense schedule of meetings at technical level” in the Antici simplification group.

“Based on the topic that is being discussed, member states can choose which experts represent them in the Antici subgroup,” the spokesperson added.

Too fast or just right?

Many of the diplomats POLITICO spoke to say they are confident that simplification can be done both quickly and diligently.

But with many of the proposed cuts targeting environmental laws, the simplification drive has created tension between Europe’s environmental objectives and its push to revive industry.

Civil society groups are alarmed by this and have accused the Commission of undermining the democratic lawmaking process by rushing simplification proposals through without allowing for proper impact assessments to be conducted. The European Ombudsman reprimanded the executive for maladministration because it did not respect its own lawmaking guidelines when drafting several of its simplification bills.

“This wave of omnibus packages is being adopted without proper impact assessments and with very limited expert input at Council level, weakening environmental and public health standards, but also undermining our democratic model,” said Anaïs Berthier, lawyer and head of ClientEarth in Brussels.

Some companies have also complained about the simplification files creating regulatory uncertainty and additional costs for them.

EU institutions struck a deal on four of the 10 packages so far. In the Council, EU countries agreed on a common position for another three proposals entirely and on parts of a third. Work is ongoing for the rest of the files and Ireland, which takes over the presidency from Cyprus in July, will have to push them through to meet the end-of-year deadline.

Jakob Weizman, Gabriel Gavin, Bartosz Brzezinski and Ellen O’Regan contributed to this report.