In an interview with POLITICO in January, French Socialists and Democrats (S&D) member of the European Parliament Aurore Lalucq, who chairs the Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, said MEPs were left out of the loop about what was coming from the Commission. She said it is “not the best way to work” and that the Commission should “work together” with other institutions rather than keeping them in the dark.
On Jan. 21, von der Leyen met with the chairs of EPP, S&D, Renew, and Greens to talk about competitiveness in the wake of Trump, especially about the upcoming omnibus bill that is supposed to cut down on EU bureaucracy and boost European industry. According to three senior group officials, von der Leyen proposed strengthening the Commission’s dialogue with the four political families before the bill’s presentation on Feb. 26, “to ensure that a parliamentary majority stands strong behind a key law, basically avoiding chaos as like with [the] deforestation [regulation],” one of the officials said, adding that “the idea was for relevant MEPs to work with DGs to see what are the main lines each group wants to include.”
Yet, according to one of the officials, the Commission did not formally reach out to Parliament to talk about the omnibus until Tuesday. “Three weeks ago von der Leyen promised to work with Parliament, and as of this morning we had received nothing,” the official said.
MEPs and NGOs working on sustainability files have echoed those concerns. The Greens group said it was “alarmed” when it found out about the first omnibus, flagging its “rushed process and timeline” which “goes against the principles of good governance and is inherently undemocratic.”
Trade unions, green finance groups and environmental NGOs have also cried foul, arguing that the omnibus cutting green reporting rules will represent the interests of industry too heavily and hasn’t followed a proper consultation process.
Move fast and break things
But for all the critics, von der Leyen’s push for a more agile method of agreeing EU laws has its fans.
