11/05/2026
The Commission’s simplification agenda tends to favour corporate interests while sidelining civil society and weakening consultation standards. This is the conclusion reached by the latest report published by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). The central question asked:
How do corporate lobby groups shape the agenda developed by the European Commission?
In 2025, 84% of meetings with the 13 Commissioners involved were with business groups, compared to 7.8% with civil society organisations. Commissioners leading on “simplification” show extreme imbalances: Dombrovskis held 182 out of 184 meetings with business and Sejourne held 84 meetings of this kind, all of them with business.
This imbalance is not unusual in EU policymaking, but this reveals a pattern of systemic exclusion of civil society across the simplification agenda.
Targeted consultations
An important aspect is the consultation methodology underpinning the Commission’s simplification drive. These “targeted consultations” take two forms and both deepen the imbalance.
The Implementation Dialogues have been put in place as a form of consultation that provides feedback from the stakeholders to hear business concerns and identify opportunities for simplification and burden reduction. Commissioners need to hold such dialogues at least twice a year. While in theory this methodology is aligned with the principle of consultations, a closer look at the composition of the participants reveals a worrying truth: the participation of business representatives (71.1%) largely exceeds the participation of civil society (11.3%).
The second form of targeted consultations are Reality Checks. They have similar objectives to the Implementation Dialogues, that is to identify opportunities for simplification. Being exempt from Commission’s standard transparency rules, these consultations are an opaque, confidential space where upcoming omnibuses are developed.
Here, the risk of corporate dominance comes from targeting solely “practitioners”. As underscored by the CEO’s report, out of 22 Reality Checks, 7 were business only, 3 had over 90% business participation and 8 had no civil society participation and 11 had 5 or fewer civil society participants. The average business participation was 79%.
Those two kinds of targeted consultations, Implementation Dialogues and Reality Checks, reflect a new style of EU decision making, one that ignores ethical rules, promotes opacity and sidelines civil society.
How is it worse than ever?
The report emphasises that this is not the first ever attempt at EU deregulation, just as it is not new for the Commission to team up with corporate lobby groups. However, the current deregulation campaign is unprecedented, due to its scale, scope and depth of corporate involvement.
The scale is vast, as all Commissioners have received orders to scrutinise all legislation in their area through Implementation Dialogues and Reality Checks.
The scope of the agenda is unprecedented, as it can affect almost anything. Deregulation can strike anywhere, it covers all EU laws (besides the EU Acquis).
The currently observed depth of corporate involvement has never reached such high levels. The Commission develops the simplification agenda together with corporate actors and little interest in involving civil society.
How to respond?
The webinar underscored the need to acknowledge the extent to which civil society is being sidelined – from implementation dialogues and oversight mechanisms to limited access to Commissioners. This amounts to a combination of corporate capture and the systematic marginalisation of civil society. Fighting back will require being smart, agile, and creative.
It also highlighted the need for a coordinated campaign to shed light on the Commission’s consultation methods and the rapid decline in attention to perspectives beyond those of business actors. The 2002 EU principles of consultation need to be defended and actively promoted, and opaque methods such as Reality Checks should be rolled back entirely.
At The Good Lobby, we recognise the importance of countering the deregulatory agenda. To support civil society in navigating the changing policy landscape, we launched the Deregulation Monitor, where we track the EU’s “simplification” push and its implications for transparency, accountability, and the quality of policymaking.