Commission scraps green claims rule triggering institutional crisis warning

The European Commission lit a political fuse on Friday when it announced the withdrawal of the Green Claims Directive, a relatively narrow piece of legislation that would have forced companies to back up environmental marketing claims with verifiable evidence. The decision itself was not unexpected, the directive had been stalled for months, but the manner of its killing, and the political context surrounding it, detonated a row that has been building since the European elections last June.

A capitulation that looked like coordination

Two days before the Commission's announcement, the European People's Party (EPP), the largest group in the European Parliament, sent a formal letter to the Commission demanding the directive be scrapped. The Commission's subsequent declaration that it would do exactly that, without apparent resistance or negotiation, fed a growing conviction among the centre-left bloc that the EPP is now directing not only the Parliament's agenda but the Commission's work programme as well.

Valérie Hayer, chair of the Renew Europe liberal group, did not mince words. "We are on the brink of an institutional crisis," she said. The Socialists and Democrats and the Greens/EFA echoed the sentiment, framing the episode as the latest evidence that the Commission under Ursula von der Leyen has abandoned its role as guardian of the treaties in favour of political accommodation with the right.

The Green Deal's long retreat

The Green Claims Directive was never the centrepiece of the European Green Deal, the sweeping environmental reform package that defined von der Leyen's first term after its launch in late 2019. Back then, with Greta Thunberg at the height of her influence and climate policy enjoying cross-ideological support, the Green Deal encompassed climate, biodiversity, pollution, agriculture, energy efficiency, recycling and more. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shifted political attention to energy security and defence, but the real turning point came with the farmers' protests of late 2023 and early 2024.

Those protests, directed in part at EU environmental rules affecting agriculture, handed the EPP a political opening. With the European elections looming and the populist right projected to make gains, the EPP positioned itself as the defender of Europe's rural economy against environmental overreach. The strategy paid off: the June 2024 elections delivered a more right-leaning Parliament in which the EPP found itself in a pivotal position, able to form majorities either with the hard and far right or with the traditional centrist bloc of Socialists, liberals and Greens.

First target: nature and pesticides

The EPP's first major target was the Nature Restoration Law, designed to reverse biodiversity loss across the EU. The group succeeded in watering down the legislation substantially, and would have killed it entirely had Austria's environment minister not broken ranks at the final hour. The EPP did, however, succeed in killing the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation, which would have set binding reduction targets for chemical pesticide use.

These early victories established a pattern. The EPP, often working with national governments and industry lobbyists, would identify a Green Deal measure, argue it imposed excessive burdens on businesses or farmers, and push for its dilution or withdrawal. The Commission, under pressure from member states and keen to demonstrate its 'simplification' credentials, frequently accommodated.

Breaking the cordon sanitaire

The next flashpoint came over the EU's anti-deforestation regulation, which requires companies placing certain commodities on the EU market to prove they were not produced on recently deforested land. The EPP attempted to water down the rules with the support of far-right groups in Parliament, drawing accusations that it had breached the cordon sanitaire, the unwritten agreement among centrist parties not to collaborate with the far right. The attempt failed, but the episode signalled a willingness to cross old political lines in pursuit of deregulation.

The omnibus simplification machine

In February 2025, the Commission unveiled its first omnibus simplification package, proposed at the behest of member countries and industry and backed by the EPP. The draft proposal was, in effect, a bonfire of green regulation: it slashed the content and reduced the scope of multiple laws simultaneously. What began as a single omnibus bill has since become a rolling programme, with the Commission, EU countries and right-leaning parliamentary groups targeting an expanding list of green rules through successive simplification measures.

The tally of measures affected is extensive. Green regulations for farmers have been cut. Laws on soil health have been watered down. The protection status of wild wolves has been downgraded. The scope of chemical safety regulations has been reduced. The carbon border adjustment mechanism, the EU's carbon border tax, has had its scope narrowed. Billions in Covid-19 recovery funds earmarked for climate projects have been redirected to defence. The term "Green Deal" was blocked from a Parliament report on water resilience. EU funding for green NGOs has been criticised. Greenwashing laws have been weakened. Attacks on anti-deforestation and forest monitoring laws have continued.

Two concessions that strike at the core

Most of these changes have nibbled at the edges of the Green Deal without touching its central promise: cutting greenhouse gas emissions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. But two developments stand out for their potential to undermine that core trajectory.

First, the Commission caved to industry pressure for leniency on this year's vehicle emission targets. These targets were designed as a milestone on the route to the 2035 ban on new combustion-engine cars. The softening of the 2025 targets, coupled with a widening of the loopholes around the 2035 deadline, calls into question whether the phase-out will hold.

Second, the Commission has drafted a plan to allow the use of international carbon credits to meet the EU's 2040 climate targets. This would mark a fundamental shift: instead of requiring domestic emissions reductions, the EU would permit member states and companies to buy offsets from overseas projects. Critics argue this outsources the hard work of decarbonisation and risks repeating the credibility problems that plagued earlier carbon market mechanisms.

A Parliament that has changed its centre of gravity

The frustration of the Socialists, Renew and the Greens stems not only from policy losses but from a structural shift in parliamentary arithmetic. In the previous legislature, the centrist bloc, EPP, Socialists, Renew and Greens, could pass legislation with a comfortable majority. The 2024 elections shattered that configuration. The EPP now sits at the centre of a right-leaning Parliament where it can choose its partners: the traditional centrists to its left, or the European Conservatives and Reformists, Identity and Democracy, and other right-wing formations to its right.

This gives the EPP effective veto power over the Parliament's agenda. It also gives the group leverage over the Commission, which needs parliamentary support for its legislative proposals and for the confirmation of commissioners. The perception among centre-left MEPs is that von der Leyen's Commission has internalised this dynamic, pre-emptively conceding to EPP demands rather than risking parliamentary defeat.

What the Commission says, and what it doesn't

Subsequent reporting has raised questions about whether the Commission's Friday announcement was intentional or the result of a spokesperson's error. Some officials suggested the directive was merely being 'paused' pending a broader review of consumer protection legislation. But the political damage was done. The centre-left's reaction was not to a procedural nuance but to a pattern: the Commission appears to act on EPP instruction, whether or not that instruction arrives via a formal letter.

The Commission's official line remains that simplification is necessary to preserve European competitiveness and that the Green Deal's climate targets are untouched. But the cumulative effect of the omnibus packages, the vehicle emissions concession, and the carbon credits proposal suggests a Commission that is managing a retreat rather than driving a transition.