The EU is getting worse

Recently, there has been growing criticism of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Not only did former European Council President Charles Michel claim that she was exercising her mandate in an “authoritarian” manner, but Suzanne Lynch, the EU correspondent for leading news agency Bloomberg, also accuses her of a “power grab” and “micromanagement”.

Von der Leyen has long been a target of the growing right-wing conservative faction in the European Parliament. The main reason for this is her extremely expensive “Green Deal” policy, but also controversial is her resistance to fundamental change in European migration policy. Recently, we have seen a shift in the latter at EU level, but this is more in spite of than thanks to von der Leyen.

Angela Merkel’s parting gift

The appointment of the politician as Commission President in 2019 is the dubious parting gift to Europe from Angela Merkel, who served as German Chancellor for 16 years. In doing so, Merkel promoted one of her least popular ministers away to Brussels. Just like Merkel — who allowed migration chaos, closed nuclear power stations and pursued greater European centralisation — von der Leyen is actually left-wing. That is no crime, but it is problematic given that she supposedly comes from a centre-right political party.

This is also evident from her choice of speechwriters. Alongside a former socialist European Parliament adviser, her team even includes the former right-hand man of Robert Habeck, the former German Green Minister for Economic Affairs and Vice-Chancellor. It should come as no surprise, then, that in recent years von der Leyen has fiercely opposed the reduction or suspension of the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) — a de facto climate tax that makes energy even more expensive than it already is for Europe’s energy-intensive industries. In Germany, in particular, the chemical industry is suffering greatly as a result.

Markus Kamieth, CEO of the German chemical giant BASF, and the world’s largest chemical company, described the ETS in February as “outdated”. According to him, his company is already paying “hundreds of millions” a year in CO2 allowances, “and in the coming years this will increase dramatically if the ETS is not changed and reformed. (…) We face a crucial choice: do we retain our industrial base in Europe and transform it into a climate-neutral industry? If so, we must indeed control energy and climate costs and be able to obtain permits for new projects more quickly.” Jim Ratcliffe, CEO of the British chemical company Ineos, wants to suspend European carbon taxes for five years. The United Kingdom continues to largely follow European climate policy to this day, despite Brexit, and Ineos is also active in the EU. “Europe has not reduced its emissions but exported them,” says Ratcliffe, adding: “Production has moved to the US and China, where carbon intensity is much higher.”

Von der Leyen is largely unfazed by all this. EU member state leaders asked her institution in March to do something about this, but the European Commission has so far only come up with a few limited measures to bring the ETS price down slightly. Indeed, immediately after the announcement in early April, the market price of ETS rose, indicating that traders had expected more far-reaching measures. On top of that, the European Commission is proposing a new “decarbonisation fund” of up to 30 billion euros, partly financed by ETS revenues. It is truly hopeless. Even with policies intended to strengthen competitiveness, von der Leyen and her European Commission are coming up with yet more spending.

The power of the European Commission 

The fact that von der Leyen is now also facing criticism from mainstream figures, and not just from classical liberals and right-wing conservatives, is telling. It shows just how irresponsible it was to appoint her. The European Commission is, after all, an immensely powerful institution.

It enjoy the monopoly to propose legislation that will be valid for almost 450 million people — or a lot more, when the “Brussels effect” of non-European industries voluntarily adopting EU standards is taken into account. But it also plays a major role after its proposals have been published, during the legislative process, through its role as shaping or “mediating” the negotiations, “trilogues”, between EU member states and the European Parliament.

Last but not least, the EU Commission has great influence over the implementing measures for EU legislation, as it is chairing “comitology” committees with national representatives that are tasked to decide those measures. According to a Dutch PhD thesis, almost 50 percent of the content of legislation is decided during that stage.

A large-scale study undertaken by my former think tank Open Europe concluded that the impact of EU legislation accounts for about two thirds of all legislation in the EU. Despite this great power, the decision-making process by the European Commission often leaves much to be desired. Not only are many proposals still adopted without regulatory impact assessment, sometimes, scientific considerations are not sufficiently taken into account. An analysis by think tank ECIPE notes that even when there are impact assessments, “indirect and long-term costs are often neglected, marginalised or entirely ignored.”

Ever more overregulation

With von der Leyen at the helm of the European Commission, the EU’s regulatory burden has increased enormously. In 2023, the German Regulatory Control Council concluded that the new EU regulations enacted during the pandemic alone resulted in an annual compliance cost of 550 million euros.

In von der Leyen’s second term, which began in 2024, there appears to be little improvement, even though a so-called regulatory “simplification” initiative was launched. Earlier this year, the German newspaper Die Welt published an article on the European Commission’s track record in terms of deregulation. The newspaper noted that, despite all the rhetoric, “under Ursula von der Leyen in 2025 there were even more new legislative acts than in previous years.” It also highlighted a yet-to-be-published study by the German industry federation Gesamtmetall:

In 2025, the institution (…) initiated 1,456 legislative acts – more than at any time since 2010. (…) According to the study, the Commission proposed 21 directives and 102 regulations, and issued 137 delegated acts and 1,196 implementing acts – even though von der Leyen had announced an ‘unprecedented’ reduction in regulation for last year. Even during the CDU politician’s first term in office, from 2019 to 2024, there were significantly more legislative acts than under her two predecessors. 

Von der Leyen’s first term, between 2019 and 2024, was dominated by the “Green Deal”, an avalanche of EU regulations unleashed upon businesses. The fact that the situation deteriorated even further in 2025 speaks volumes. Under her leadership, the European Commission appears to have gotten completely out of control.

A failure on all fronts

If there were at the same time progress in removing trade barriers in Europe, this might still be somewhat justified. Unfortunately, there is, according to Suzanne Lynch, “scant progress on deepening the single market or boosting the competitiveness of the EU, one of the world’s largest trading blocs but one that is struggling to keep pace with the US and China.”

Lynch quotes Roger Dassen, CFO of ASML, the Dutch company which, as a manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, is absolutely crucial to the global economy. He described it as a “major red flag for industry” that ASML, Europe’s most valuable company, derives just 1 per cent of its revenue from Europe.

The AI Act, the EU regulation on artificial intelligence under von der Leyen in 2023, plays a detrimental role in this regard. It is currently already being revised, to make it “simpler” and “more innovation-friendly”, in the EU Commission’s own words. Then, French President Emmanuel Macron openly criticised the law at the time. He said: “We can decide to regulate much faster and much stronger than our major competitors. But we will regulate things that we will no longer produce or invent. This is never a good idea,”

It shows just how powerful the European regulatory machine has become when even the French President is unable to stand up to it. Replacing von der Leyen is certainly not enough to do anything about this, but it is the necessary first step.

Once this has been achieved, the top 20 per cent of senior officials at the European Commission should immediately be fired, with only those being rehired that subscribe to the vision of a European Union that limits itself to opening up trade between Member States and with the rest of the world. In addition to abolishing the countless European agencies and bureaucracy, and largely abolishing the wasteful EU budget, national veto powers over all EU policy decisions must also be restored. Perhaps this could even be achieved through a simple pledge by the Member States, without amending the Treaty, along the lines of the “Luxembourg compromise” statement to appease France in the 1960s, when it was worried about being outvoted. The kind of reform EU technocracy needs may be unrealistic at the moment, but the cost of not doing anything is steadily increasing.