Eurobloat #0192 • April 2026
April was the month Brussels announced it would cut its own red tape, which sounds splendid until you read the small print and find that the real project is to pull yet more power up from the member states to the centre.
Folly of the Month: "deregulation" that is really a power grab
On 28 April the Commission published its 2026 Better Regulation Communication, with a "Regulatory Deep Cleaning" promising to tidy twelve policy areas at once. Cutting red tape would be wonderful. But the plan's engine is to favour regulations over directives and full harmonisation over partial, which in plain terms means moving lawmaking out of national parliaments and into Brussels. Real deregulation would hand power back to the nations; this hands more to the centre and dresses it up as housekeeping. The mop is for show; the other hand is reaching for the controls.
→ thegoodlobby.eu → commission.europa.eu
1. The court decides which laws a nation may pass
On 21 April the Court of Justice ruled that Hungary broke EU law by adopting its own legislation on LGBTI matters, whatever one thinks of that law. A union that began as a customs arrangement now strikes down the statutes of an elected national parliament, which is precisely the centralisation that ought to be running the other way.
2. The six-billion-euro bailout it should not have waved through
On 23 April the Court dismissed Lufthansa's appeal and upheld the annulment of the Commission's approval of Germany's €6 billion recapitalisation of the airline during the pandemic. The body that polices state aid turns out to be rather bad at it when a large member state is the one asking.
3. Six per cent of the planet, if Meta does not police your birthday
On 29 April the Commission preliminarily found Meta in breach of the Digital Services Act for not stopping under-thirteens from signing up to Facebook and Instagram, with a possible fine of up to six per cent of worldwide turnover. The remedy on offer is more identity checking, more age verification and more scanning of who you are before you may post, which is the surveillance state wearing a child-protection badge.
4. Even Washington calls the Space Act overreach
United States officials described the proposed EU Space Act as complicated overreach reaching well beyond Europe's orbit. When the country with the rockets thinks your space rules go too far, you have achieved something.
5. Even the friendly think tank smells a rat
Bruegel, a Brussels institution to its bones, judged that the Commission's renewed promise of "better regulation" was yet to be proven. When even the house analysts suspect the deregulation is more talk than substance, scepticism is well placed.
6. The activists who want the red tape kept
Campaign groups launched "Hands Off Nature" and "Rules to Protect" to fight the tidy-up, demanding Brussels keep piling on the very rules that smother enterprise. There is something fitting about a lobby whose great cause is the preservation of paperwork.
7. Harmonising away what is left of national choice
By preferring full harmonisation, the plan strips member states of the flexibility to tailor rules to their own people. The word on the tin says simpler; the contents say one size, decided in Brussels, for everyone.
8. The cigarette-filter reading room
On 21 April the Court held that where a health directive leans on international standards, citizens must at least be allowed to read them. Somewhere in this is a serious point about the rule of law, and also the image of a Union that needed a tribunal to discover that people should be able to see the rules binding them.
9. The European Central Bank has thoughts, again
On 9 April the ECB issued yet another of its formal legal opinions, because no corner of economic life is complete without one. The institution that cannot resist an opinion duly supplied another.
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