The European Commission will radically simplify EU green regulations in a bid to jump-start Europe’s struggling industry and compete with faster-growing economies in Asia and America.
The changes will affect three laws that force companies to take more responsibility for their environmental impacts, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. Business had complained these rules were complicated and onerous, and suffocated Europe’s competitiveness.
It’s a decisive pivot away from the Green Deal program of the last five years, which put climate and the environment at the center of European lawmaking. The hope was that where Europe went, the world would follow.
But the latest retreat suggests Brussels no longer trusts this narrative and is worried its green regulations in their current form will have a negative economic impact — a fear shared by a growing number of European countries, businesses and economic experts.
