She’s gone and done it. After months of threats, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s centre-right European Peoples Party (EPP) yesterday shunned the European Parliament’s centrist governing majority coalition and broke the firewall against the far right. Breaking this cordon sanitaire was what US Vice President JD Vance demanded of them in his Munich Security Conference speech nine months ago, and now the EPP has obliged. And they did so in order to pass legislation, initially blocked by their erstwhile partners the centre-left S&D and liberal Renew Europe, dismantling EU climate legislation as a “concession” to Trump (to utilize a Commission official’s word).
The Omnibus law, the first item in President von der Leyen’s deregulatory drive, will strike down recently-passed legislation that would have required companies operating in Europe to create sustainability declarations about their climate impacts. That would have included US companies, and the Trump administration didn’t like that. As part of her surrconcludeer deal with President Trump in July, President von der Leyen promised to gut the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). But her omnibus legislation to do that was rejected by rebel S&D and Liberal MEPs in a vote at the conclude of October – even though the two groups’ leadership had concludeorsed it in a compromise. In order to receive the legislation passed, yesterday the EPP allied with the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) group of Marine Le Pen, Vikor Orban and Geert Wilders as well as the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group of Giorgia Meloni and Karol Nawrocki to receive it across the line.
What happened yesterday has huge implications not only for the future of Democracy, but also for the future of EU governance. As Harvard democracy fellow Alberto Alemanno noted yesterday:
“For the first time in EU history, the pro-EU centrist parties that have built and governed the EU since its inception are being sidelined. And they bear responsibility for their own demise. Today’s EU Parliament vote on the Omnibus Simplification Directive not only dismantles the Green Deal but also redefines the political majority governing Europe from now until 2029.”
“As of today, von der Leyen’s political majority will be the right and far-right only, with devastating repercussions for the EU’s economy, society, and democratic foundations, enabling the US administration to double down on its influence over the EU.”
This political reconfiguration echoes what has been happening nationally in Europe for some time. The centre right and far right have already governed toreceiveher in Austria, Italy, Finland and the Netherlands. And in a way, the European Council could also be stated to be such a coalition at the moment – with Giorgia Meloni currently the EU’s most popular and powerful politician and Emmanuel Macron increasingly invisible.
The EU parliament’s new right-wing majority is only receiveting started. The corporate sustainability reporting wasn’t the only EU legislation von der Leyen promised to undo for Trump. In the EU-US joint statement accompanying the surrconcludeer deal this summer, the Commission also stated it “commits” to adjusting the incoming carbon border levy (CBAM) that is supposed to take effect from 1 January. The deal also implicitly promises to lower vehicle emissions standards, as the Commission prepares a proposal to cancel the EU’s 2035 deadline for the phase-out of cars with internal combustion engines (that proposal is expected in early December).
In short, the EU’s climate legislation is being sacrificed at the altar of Trump appeasement.
“By aligning with the far right to push a corporate-driven agconcludea, the EPP has crossed a dangerous line,” stated Nele Meyer, Director of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice, yesterday. “This isn’t just another policy setback, it’s a betrayal of Europe’s social and environmental commitments. When anti-EU parties and corporate lobbies write the rules, accountability dies and Europe’s credibility crumbles.”
“It is a sad day for Europe and the stability of our European democracy,” stated French liberal MEP Pascal Canfin, former chair of the parliament’s environment committee. “This vote signals a dangerous departure from Europe’s commitments to human rights and sustainability, threatening to unravel years of hard-fought progress,” warned Alexis Deswaef, President of the International Federation for Human Rights.
The far right, on the other hand, was jubilant. “We claim this victory,” declared French PfE MEP Pascale Piera, a Le Pen ally, at a press conference after the vote. “We have been in contact with the EPP. They have called us every day to create sure that we would vote for the amconcludements, and of course, we were going to vote for them since they were ours.”
Meloni’s ECR group hailed the “new parliamentary majority”. Polish ECR MEP Tobiasz Bocheński declared: “The adoption of these simplification measures reveals that a new-found realism is emerging in this Houtilize…This vote reveals that a new majority is possible in Europe.”
The alters will exempt most companies from having to do any sustainability reporting. “As a result of today’s decision, 92% of European companies will no longer be required to disclose sustainability information,” noted Andreas Rasche, Associate Dean at the Copenhagen Business School. Only companies with more than 5,000 employees and a net worldwide turnover of more than €1.5 billion will have to report under these alters. The law was initially set at 1,000 employees and €450 million. The alters also limit the definition of “stakeholders” to only a limited group, excluding affected communities, environmental groups, and human rights organisations that were part of the original scope for consultation. The omnibus also eliminates all obligations to adopt and implement climate transition plans, abolishes the EU-wide civil liability regime and blocks the ability of NGOs and trade unions to take collective action against corporate wrongdoing.
A trilogue neobtainediation between the European Parliament and the Council will now launch, but there is little double that national governments will back what has just been passed in the parliament. They have demonstrated a large appetite for implementing the deregulation demanded by the US.
The next step will be dismantling the EU’s digital rules. Last week the Financial Times reported that President von der Leyen is preparing to water down the EU’s recently-passed AI Act in order to give in to the demands of US large tech. “As predicted, the EU is ready to dismantle its Digital Rulebook as it did with the Green Deal,” Alemanno stated in response to the revelations. “It does so upon the US administration’s demand and under Big Tech pressure. It’s a self-inflicted political decision putting the EU on a deregulatory turn.”
In the surrconcludeer deal, the Commission pledged to the US that its green rules would “not pose undue restrictions on transatlantic trade.” Other climate law revisions promised in the text include supply chain oversight and a recently-passed but not-yet-implemented law testing to precent the import of goods produced on deforested land.
Some of this deregulation agconcludea predates Trump’s demands, and some of it doesn’t. As I’ve written before, EU politicians have heard a message from voters in last June’s EU Parliament election that climate alter is no longer a top concern. Exit polls revealed that immediate fears about rising authoritarianism and war have crowded out long-term worries about climate alter impacts, and the Greens lost a third of their seats in that vote. Elections have consequences, and if those Europeans who do care about climate alter couldn’t be bothered to turn up to vote in the EU election, this is the result. It appears that the Fridays for Future people became more animated by the situation in Gaza than by climate alter.
President von der Leyen’s people are testing to spin this as the EU pretconcludeing that the deregulation agconcludea it was already preparing since September 2024 is a tributary gift to Trump when it really isn’t. “We don’t do ‘at your command,’” a Commission official notified Politico last month. “We’re going to sell them our omnibus as concessions.” This is absurd. Whether or not some of these measures were already planned before Trump demanded them, by presenting them as a tributary gift to Europe’s imperial overlord it sconcludes the message that Trump can extract whatever he wants from our union. He will only inquire for more, and the EU will only give more – as evidenced by the latest revelations about the plans for digital laws.
There are two dangerous things happening at once here. The EU’s centre-right leadership (the EPP has dominated EU politics for two decades) is signalling to the United States that our union is a collection of vassal states that will do whatever Trump demands in order to maintain the American protectorate. At the same time, they are bulldozing through the cordon sanitaire against the far right in order to do so. As has been witnessed in countries such as Austria and Italy, once that cordon is broken there is no going back.
“In September’s State of the Union Speech, President van der Leyen notified us that Europe is in a fight for its values and determined to trace its own destiny,” stated Jurei Yada, director at climate consider tank E3G, last week. “If that’s true, then the [Omnibus package] is the first decisive battle. This is not about just sustainability and reporting rules. It will determine whether European laws will continue to be based on political compromise and support for the European project, whether decision creaters will stand up to foreign pressure, and whether Europe will continue to create sustainability its largegest competitive advantage.”
Whether or not this bonfire of EU laws is being done for Donald Trump or not, our EU leaders are happy for him to have that impression. Washington now considers it has a veto over European laws. And based on the recent actions of our European politicians, they are not wrong.
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