Eurobloat #0190 • February 2026
February brought the welcome bonfire of a great heap of corporate paperwork, alongside the less edifying sight of Brussels defending an arbitrary nine-figure fine against X and being told, by Washington, that its rules amount to censorship.
Folly of the Month: seventy per cent of "essential" turns out to be optional
On 24 February the Council gave its final blessing to the Sustainability Omnibus, cutting the corporate reporting rules Brussels had spent years calling indispensable. The flagship standard fell from 1,073 data points to 320, a seventy per cent reduction. Slashing this nonsense is exactly right and long overdue. The folly is that the Union built the 1,073-box monster in the first place, forced businesses across the continent to spend years and fortunes feeding it, and now expects gratitude for the cull, with not a word about who is answerable for the waste.
→ regulationtomorrow.com → sedex.com
1. Seven hundred "vital" disclosures, quietly binned
The reporting standard shed roughly seven hundred data points overnight. Every one of them was once declared essential, and businesses paid dearly to supply them; their sudden disappearance is the clearest confession yet that most of it was never needed.
2. The "moral necessity" turned out to be negotiable
The same package watered down and delayed the corporate due-diligence directive, the law sold barely a year earlier as a moral imperative. It is a relief to see the burden eased, though it does rather expose how quickly Brussels morality folds once the compliance bill arrives.
3. The arbitrary fine heads to court, and good for X
On 16 February X filed its challenge at the General Court to the €120 million Digital Services Act fine handed down in December, arguing the investigation was superficial, the process biased and its rights of defence trampled. A penalty the Commission set without any clear formula, on the strength of how grave it judged the offence to be, deserves to be tested by judges, and the firm that pushes back against Brussels regulatory adventurism does the rest of us a favour.
4. A trade war, in pursuit of a fine
With Brussels promising ever tougher tech enforcement in 2026, the Trump administration threatened substantial retaliatory tariffs and a Section 301 trade investigation should the Union keep targeting American technology firms. Picking fights with the world's most successful companies, and the country they come from, is not regulation; it is a vendetta the Union cannot afford.
5. Washington puts the censorship charge in writing
On 3 February a United States congressional committee published the second part of its "Foreign Censorship Threat" report, accusing the Digital Services Act of policing what people may say. When a foreign legislature writes a report about your speech rules, your speech rules are the problem.
6. The Union cannot keep its own story straight
Brussels spent a decade declaring the GDPR an inviolable shield, and now, mid-rewrite, even its own consumer body was left protesting about the changes. An institution this confused about its own flagship law might pause before writing the next one.
→ beuc.eu
7. The plan to read everyone's messages grinds on
On 26 February the negotiators met again over the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, the so called Chat Control that would push providers towards scanning private messages and so towards breaking the encryption that protects everyone. Dressing mass surveillance of lawful citizens up as child protection is the oldest trick Brussels owns, and the fact that the scheme will not die is reason enough to keep watching it.
8. The GDPR, trimmed back towards sense
Part of the digital rewrite narrows the very definition of personal data, lightening a regime that had swollen into an industry of its own. A reasonable correction, and one more quiet admission that the original reached too far.
9. Simplification as a permanent confession
The Commission spent the month trailing yet more simplification packages, in energy, tax and beyond. Each new bonfire of rules is welcome, and each is also an admission of how much needless rule-making Brussels keeps producing in the first place.
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