Today’s release of the ‘One Europe, One Market’ roadmap during the Informal European Council Summit marks another milestone in the EU’s rushed and relentless drive to get rid off the protections that ensure we drink clean water, eat healthy food and enjoy the nature that surrounds us.
Undemocratic process
Similar to what we have seen in the Commission’s 10 Omnibus proposals, Ursula von der Leyen seems hellbent on skipping democratic processes once again in order to rush this roadmap through. Member State ambassadors were reportedly caught off guard by the accelerated timeline and its late inclusion on the Coreper II agenda on 17 April, leaving them with little time to develop their positions. Both the Council and Parliament had limited visibility on progress since the roadmap was announced in February, fuelling concerns about increasing centralisation of power within the Commission, and von der Leyen’s leadership style as mentioned by former Council president Charles Michel in the Brussels Times.
The ‘One Europe, One Market’ roadmap and action plan, including indicative timelines for legislative measures is expected to focus on further development of the Single Market but includes also strategies on trade, energy prices and decarbonisation and again more deregulation, framed as ‘simplifying rules‘. But rather than focusing on public health and well-being, the European Commission is creating uncertainty for its citizens by weakening and abolishing laws that protect human rights, health and safety standards and the environment. And this week it’s crossing over from the EU bubble to national governments. With the ‘One Europe, One Market’ roadmap, the Commission and some heads of government want to shrink the freedom of national lawmakers to come up with more ambitious rules on their territories.
Attack on ‘gold plating’ on Member State level
Interestingly, this time the national governments are inexplicably agreeing to bind their own hands by shrinking their freedom in applying and amending EU regulations designed to protect citizens. The roadmap proposes to abolish the so called ‘gold plating‘ mechanism, a tool that has given EU countries the freedom to ensure that EU laws fit the needs of a country and its citizens.
Kim Claes, corporate capture campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said:
We know that corporate interests have pressured the European Commission into attacking vital protections for profit, whilst these very laws deliver safety to citizens. It is mind boggling that now national governments are willing to minimise their right to regulate, adapt and improve laws that clean up rivers and detoxify our lives as they see fit to their local reality.
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Fossil Free Politics
Politicians should make climate laws to protect people – not please the fossil fuel industry. We need to cut fossil fuel interests out of our politics, similar to existing restrictions on the tobacco industry.
