Simplification and Environment: a brief review of the Environmental Omnibus package
By: Antonio Manuel Torres García
Reading time: 5 minutes and 30 seconds
Everybody remembers the Draghi Report. After all, it sparked a serious debate over the EU’s competitive capacity vis-à-vis the wider world, and the ripple waves it generated are still very much omnipresent in the EU institutions, notably through the European Commission’s subsequent simplification agenda. While one could flag the Commission’s action as “incomplete”, that alone does not render the expansive effects of the renewed simplification efforts insufficient. And, in fact, it is anything but simple. In particular, areas where the EU is considered a trailblazer, such as in environmental (and the many collateral) legislation, these Omnibus packages, which breathe life into Draghi’s ideas, may hide what has been labelled as “deregulation”.
In this article, you will learn, first, about the Omnibus Packages and the legislation simplification efforts. Then, the Environmental Omnibus Package will be presented. In closing, a reflection of its effects will be provided.
Let’s start at the beginning: what is an “Omnibus Package”?
That the EU is facing mounting challenges is hardly a mystery, from demographic strains and rising energy costs, to global competition and weak productivity. With this in mind, the Commission tasked Mario Draghi in 2023, former Prime Minister of Italy and European Central Bank president, with drafting a report on the future of European competitiveness. The results? A difficult pill to swallow: Draghi singled out a growth model that is stalling, massive need for investments, internal fragmentation, an underdeveloped industrial policy plan, and slow governance. Among the issues raised by Draghi, some have resonated deeply within the institutions: complex bureaucracy, fragmented rules, overlapping reporting obligations, and regulatory uncertainty.
In comes the so-called “Omnibus packages”. The Competitiveness Compass communication, a general strategy, identified three necessities: closing the innovation gap, decarbonising our economy, and reducing dependencies. Capitalising on their renewed term and building from the Competitiveness Compass, the von der Leyen Commission has made it its goal to boost EU competitiveness, and has put forward numerous proposals with this in mind. One such component of these proposals, envisaged in the Commission work programme 2025, and arguably the largest one, aims at reducing regulatory burdens for all businesses, catering particularly to SMEs (25% reduction in administrative burdens for all businesses, and at least 35% for SMEs). The goal is to cut administrative costs by €37.5 billion by the end of their term in 2029. These very proposals take the form of single legislative instruments (the Omnibus) that, by policy areas which are often mashed together, amend several legal acts at once.
This practice has been used before, namely in consumer law, rural law, and financial law, having a rather technical character. Therefore, it is decidedly not an innovation per se. Nonetheless, its sheer scale, relative speediness, and altered modus operandi, pose a number of important questions on their democratic input and the actual content of the simplifications, which, upon a closer look, may raise deregulation worries.
The Environmental Omnibus package
The Environmental legislation package (Omnibus VIII) forms part of the ten Omnibus packages proposed so far. According to the Commission, it “aims at simplifying environmental legislation in the area of industrial emissions, circular economy, environmental assessments and geospatial data”, and targets €1 billion in cost savings.
Presented on December 10th (2025), it encompasses amendments to the Batteries Regulation, the Industrial Emissions Portal Regulation, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR, related to the Waste Framework Directive, with specific rules embedded in other legal acts), and Environmental Assessments (applicable to several legal acts, such as the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive). This non-exhaustive list represents a few of the most notable legal acts which will be subject to these simplification efforts.
What’s notable about this particular Omnibus instance is that it pursues targeted amendments while not relinquishing the high standards of environmental protection currently held in the EU. According to the Commission, the respect of EU’s goals and objectives is applicable to all legislation subject to simplification. In general, the Environmental Omnibus aims at streamlining reporting requirements, removing duplicated or outdated obligations, digitalising compliance processes, simplifying permitting for projects and industrial installations, and improving coherence among overlapping legal regimes. Thus, it touches upon several key legal acts covering different policy areas of environmental importance.
What are the implications?
There are a few thoughts to share about simplification of environmental legislation. The environmental acquis (that is, the accumulated body of environmental EU law) of the EU is inherently complex. This stems primarily from the fact that environmental challenges are transboundary and interconnected, which often leads to legal solutions considered difficult to understand, to comply with and, on occasions, with overlapping legal duties. It is mandatory in this aspect to consider if simplification is necessarily “bad”. In the case of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the simplification effort is paired with a strengthening one. If devised correctly, and properly complied with, this could be good news for the level playing field it aims to establish as regards competition among EU and third-country companies.
One cannot but wonder, nevertheless, if this process is actually simple. A look at the proposals suffices to see that they are highly complex, which stands in the way of making legislation easier to understand and, hence, to comply with. Awaiting a final decision on these proposals, it seems that simplification may not really simplify the landscape drastically.
Moreover, it is mandatory to pay close attention to how these decisions are being made. In this sense, several NGOs filed a complaint to the European Ombudswoman raising concerns about the lack of the usual procedural requirements for EU legislation. The findings of the Ombudswoman, while not binding recommendations, raise significant doubts about the decision-making process for the Omnibus I (Sustainability), especially regarding the notion of “urgency” in the provisions of the Better Regulation Guidelines, a non-binding document setting out the principles the Commission follows when preparing initiatives and proposals, but also regarding lack of assessments and inter-service consultations.
The potential deregulation aspects are equally as worrisome. After the lessons learned from the Sustainability Omnibus, which considerably narrowed the scope of application of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D), the Commission’s intention to upkeep its targets and commitments in environmental legislation can at the very least be questioned. From a legal standpoint, there may be some safeguards particular to environmental legislation against any deregulation effort. The EU environmental acquis is governed by the principles enshrined in Title XX of the TFEU, found in Article 191(2). Among them sits the “high level of environmental protection” principle, which mandates not the highest standard of protection, but a high standard nonetheless. In this sense, it can serve as a limitation to collateral deregulation coming from simplification. The 8th Environment Action Plan, a legally binding agenda guiding environmental policy and running until 2030, can serve as an additional safety net. A still incipient and not widely recognised principle of non-regression could, in these cases, act as a safeguard against potential deregulation efforts.
A last perspective to take relates more to the actual burden of these simplification efforts. Are the proposals really making procedures easier for operators, or are they shifting the pressure to already overburdened national administrations? For instance, simplified reporting requirements for operators in the context of the Industrial Emissions Directive, while perfectly desirable, may not be as efficient and simple as it appears if, at the end of the day, it is left to the EU Member States to fill that reporting gap. Compliance in this sense affects both operators and national authorities: shifting the pressure to national administrations will not necessarily simplify procedures and improve compliance.
All in all, this renewed practice of Omnibus and simplification poses significant risks not present in the usual law-making procedures, and risks undermining the effectiveness and ambition of the environmental acquis in the EU. Impromptu, it seems as if the simplification struggles may not bring about as many benefits as it does downsides. Given the variety of critical issues raised by Draghi’s report, simplification should be taken as a component of a more comprehensive strategy, as opposed to a standalone and dubious new policy direction. As students, it is our job to learn from it and analyse its implications once it enters into force. In the meantime, enhanced attention should be paid to existing legal safeguards against any potential deregulation efforts in such a policy domain the EU spearheads globally.
