29/06/2026
Civil society sounds the alarm as the Commission moves to weaken its own rulebook
The European Commission wants to make EU lawmaking “simpler, clearer, and better enforced.” But its plan to revise the Better Regulation guidelines is set to make it easier to skip fundamental procedural guarantees such as impact assessments and public consultations.
That’s what we denounced in an open letter signed by 60 civil society organisations – including The Good Lobby – addressed to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the College of Commissioners. The letter responds to the Commission’s communication “A Simpler, Clearer, and Better Enforced EU Rulebook,” and denounces how the proposed reforms risk tilting the system further toward a narrow set of industry interests, and away from the public interest the rules are meant to protect.
The Ombudsman already called this out
In the meantime the European Ombudsman has closed her inquiry into the Commission’s use of “urgent” procedures in deregulatory law-making – and made clear that the Commission has not actually fixed the problem she flagged last November, when she found that the Commission breached good administration in preparing Omnibus I, when skipping impact assessment and consultation altogether under the banner of urgency.
Rather than correcting course, the Commission’s new Better Regulation Communication risks codifying those same shortcuts into standard practice. As Prof. Alberto Alemanno, founder of The Good Lobby, put it in response to the Ombudsman’s decision: “‘Political context’ is now one of the codified justifications for the Commission skipping consultation and impact assessment, but it lacks a clear definition. The Ombudsman calls it simply too vague.” This is precisely the concern at the heart of today’s letter: vague triggers for “urgency,” a new two-tier system that can dispense with consultation and impact assessment entirely, and a quietly dropped commitment to summarise what stakeholders actually said in public consultations – the only real feedback loop available to those who take the time to respond.
Four ways the rulebook tilts the table
The letter raises concerns that go well beyond procedure:
- Urgency procedures and impact assessments that are increasingly narrow, business-cost-focused, and shielded from independent scrutiny.
- “Targeted consultations” and tools like the new “Reality Checks,” which in practice often mean only business voices are invited to the table.
- An attack on national “gold-plating”: the long-standing and entirely legitimate right of Member States to adopt higher labour, environmental, and consumer protection standards than the EU minimum, as guaranteed under Articles 153 and 192 TFEU, is stigmatised.
Taken together, these changes amount to a structural rebalancing of EU lawmaking in favour of special interests in the name of competitiveness.
What we’re calling for
The 60 organisations that signed the letter are calling on the Commission to:
- Align Better Regulation with its Treaty obligations to integrate social, environmental, and consumer concerns (Articles 3, 11 and 153 TFEU) and maintain a “high level of protection” across EU policies
- Make all consultations genuinely public, open, and transparent;
- Restore structured, balanced participation for civil society, academia, and trade unions – not just corporate expert groups;
- Conduct thorough impact assessments that go beyond narrow cost-benefit logic;
- End the one-sided campaign against national “gold-plating.”
Better Regulation should mean rules that are better for everyone, not simply fewer rules as businesses demand