Companies count the cost of compliance with green regulation

In a recent analysis of EU policy-making, Zach Meyers, assistant director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, says the European Commission, in its attempts to deal with crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change, “has become a more political body”.  This means, he argues, that the EU “has lost one of its strengths: having a technocratic lawmaking body focused on designing laws based on evidence and good practice, and which is less beholden to short-term politics than the European parliament and European Council”.

He says the commission has rushed consultation with industry, often uses emergency procedures to avoid impact assessments, and increasingly uses so-called delegated acts, which are not scrutinised by the other institutions or subject to open debate.