The Good Lobby: The New EU Better Regulation: What’s at stake?

There is one word in Brussels that is quietly changing meaning before our eyes: simplification. Over the past eighteen months it has become the magic formula used by the European Commission to justify an unprecedented wave of omnibus packages — ten in 2025 alone, with at least three more announced for 2026 — often adopted with bare-minimum consultations and no impact assessments, all in the name of urgency and competitiveness.

That logic is now at risk of leaving the emergency bracket and becoming the new normal. In the second quarter of 2026, the European Commission is expected to publish its new Communication on Better Regulation, which will update the "Toolbox" and the guidelines governing how EU laws are made. The question many observers are asking is straightforward: will the procedural shortcuts piloted through the omnibus packages now be normalised and embedded into the ordinary legislative process?

What is at stake

If the new Communication codifies the practices of recent months, the consequences will be structural: fewer public consultations, fewer impact assessments, greater Commission discretion over when evidence and scrutiny actually apply. In other words, a paradigm shift that affects not just one directive or another, but the way the European Union produces its rules in the first place.

The implications cut across three dimensions we care about deeply: democratic accountability, because narrowing the involvement of citizens, social partners and civil society means shrinking the European public sphere; sustainability, because many of the rules targeted by the omnibus packages concern climate, environment and rights; and the quality of long-term policymaking, because legislating without evidence produces legal uncertainty, litigation and — paradoxically — less of the simplification it promises.

The webinar

To unpack the new Communication (once published), assess what is at stake and explore strategies for civil society to respond, The Good Lobby is hosting a webinar with some of the most authoritative voices on EU better regulation:

• Elizabeth Golberg, former Director of Smart Regulation, European Commission (2012–2017)

• Claudio Radaelli, Professor of Comparative Public Policy, European University Institute

• Shari Hinds, Senior Policy Officer, Transparency International EU

• Alberto Alemanno, Professor of EU Law, HEC Paris & Founder of The Good Lobby (moderator)

📅 Thursday, 30 April 2026 🕒 16:30–17:30 (CEST, Brussels time) 💻 Online, via Zoom

👉 [Register here]

Part of the Deregulation Monitor

This webinar is part of The Good Lobby's Deregulation Monitor, an initiative tracking and analysing the EU's deregulation agenda and its implications for transparency, accountability and evidence-based policymaking.