European industries demanded a total elimination of bureaucracy. Now they hate it.

Companies say the bloc’s push toward simplification is “drowning in the inertia” of the Brussels bureaucracy.

The European Union thought it was making life easier for companies when it announced plans to drastically cut EU bureaucracy. But 20 months into its campaign to cut red tape, many companies simply aren’t impressed. POLITICO interviewed 17 companies, consultancies and industry associations from various sectors that expressed dissatisfaction with the way the EU is carrying out its “simplification” initiative. They say it’s too slow, expensive and complicated, and question whether an institution set up to write laws can, in practice, repeal them. The EU is “programmed” to create new rules, but “it’s much less able to remove the obstacles that hinder industrial competitiveness,” said Richard Longden, head of group communications at chemicals maker INEOS, a view shared by several other interviewees. The current disappointment is a far cry from that of November 2024, when Ursula von der Leyen appeared before the European Parliament to announce a new dawn for the EU, hailed by industry. “We need to simplify our rules to reduce the burden on companies. And we need to provide them with legal certainty about what we expect from them,” the President of the European Commission told MEPs at the time, in direct response to the industry’s unified call for less strict regulation, made in Antwerp the previous February.

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