From environmental simplification to sustainability regression. By Luis Jiménez Herrero (ASYPS)

Luis M. Jiménez Herrero is president of the Association for Sustainability and Progress of Societies (ASYPS), honorary professor at the UCM, and former director of the Sustainability Observatory in Spain (OSE).

The EU has just withdrawn the Anti -Greenwashing Directive. This action adds to a series of worrying legislative decisions that, under pressure from conservative political forces, have driven the drive to "simplify" environmental regulations, increasing the risk of deregulation or even a reversal of sustainability transitions.

In the previous decade, as the economy recovered from the Great Recession, environmental policies and transformative strategies advanced in the EU, incorporating the Paris Climate Agenda (2015), the 2030 Agenda with the SDGs (2015), and, especially, giving the major strategic boost to the European Green Deal at the end of 2019. This addressed greater climate and environmental ambition with a focus on the 2030 transition and a 2050 vision that sought a structural transformation of production systems under the logic of sustainability and firmly supported by a new, regenerative, circular economy that gives back to the planet more than it takes from it, in accordance with the Eighth Environment Action Programme (EPP). Furthermore, the EU was committed to being a world leader in climate, biodiversity, and circularity, promoting a just ecological transition.

However, the global health crisis of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, disruptions in global supply chains, turbulence in international markets, and the energy and strategic raw materials crisis have led to growing uncertainty, a worsening of global economic competition, and new geopolitical tensions, aggravated by the new war in the Middle East. Furthermore, the added impact of the Trump administration, both due to the economic instability stemming from the trade war, along with the disruption of the global order and the multilateral system, and due to deregulatory initiatives in environmental matters, have influenced European strategy, which is now more willing to strengthen its internal market and address the confusing situation of international competition.

Strategic shift in the new European Commission

This whole series of geopolitical, economic, and social factors has modified the EU's strategic priorities in line with the approaches of the new Commission at the start of the current European legislature, starting in June 2024. Previous reports such as those by Enrico Letta (on the future of the single market, "much more than a market") and Mario Draghi ("the future of European competitiveness") have been basic references for the new community shift. Faced with strong global competition for resources and the real risk of deindustrialization, the EU intends to develop a clean industrial strategy ( Net Zero Industry Act) to safeguard and boost competitiveness through the initiative defined as the Competitiveness Compass, clearly aligned with the conception of Strategic Autonomy, where the Critical Raw Materials Act plays an essential role. This Clean Industrial Pact aims to boost European green growth by supporting €100 billion in investments, in addition to other tax incentives and aid. The basis is to strengthen and harmonize the European single market as a strategic foundation for the stability and socioeconomic resilience of the world's second-largest economy (18% of the global economy, with a GDP of €18 trillion), which brings together thirty states with 450 million consumers and 26 million businesses.

With the publication of a new Single Market Strategy in May 2025 to achieve deeper harmonization across the European Union, the emphasis is on providing simplicity, fluidity, and resilience to restore competitiveness, guarantee strategic sovereignty, security, and a clean transition. The Commission has identified a set of obstacles to the single market, known as the "terrible ten," which it intends to remove to soften EU rules, now considered excessively complex. Promoting simplification, reducing bureaucracy, and streamlining the permitting process are in line with the Budapest Declaration (8/11/2024), which called for "launching a simplification revolution."

Along these lines, an "omnibus approach" is being applied to reduce regulation, although it is presented as a mere simplification of regulations, particularly affecting environmental standards and sustainability commitments. However, it is argued that the green agenda is still being covered, under the assumption that industrial policy must be better aligned with European environmental and strategic objectives. Thus, measures are being incorporated that reduce environmental requirements, or regulations are being delayed, or the reporting and accountability requirements for economic agents in terms of sustainability are being lowered. However, until now, these requirements have been progressively increasing given the unstoppable environmental deterioration and the frequent non-compliance or poor enforcement of environmental legislation, which entails enormous ecological and socioeconomic costs.

Specific environmental setbacks

There is compelling evidence that environmental policies are being slowed down or weakened, resulting in a greater risk of deviating from strategic paths guided by the logic of sustainability, which have been fully established in the EU for decades. As an illustrative example, the European Union has just withdrawn the Directive on "misleading environmental claims," intended to combat greenwashing and control the commercial use of green labels without a scientific basis or independent verification. In this case, instead of strengthening transparency and consumer confidence in sustainable products as intended, the initiative has been watered down, supposedly to reduce the regulatory burden on companies.

This is yet another example of the regressive process of European environmental regulations. Notable among these are the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) (reduced requirements, raising the threshold for affected companies to 1,000 employees and €50 million in turnover); the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) (limiting due diligence to direct suppliers and reducing the requirement for compliance with human rights and the environment in their value chains); the EU Green Taxonomy (simplifying Do No Significant Harm criteria for sustainable finance); the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) (exempting almost 90% of importers); the Nature Restoration Act (incorporating "emergency brake" clauses that can be activated in cases of food safety); and the Deforestation Directive (EUDR) (exemptions for countries rated as "zero risk"). A series of agricultural regulations and ecological objectives (CAP and GAEC) are also being softened (environmental conditionalities are being made more flexible and legal requirements for phytosanitary products and pesticides are being lowered). Similarly, in the area of transport, emissions requirements for transport are being reduced (standards for cars and trucks are being delayed, and even the ban on combustion engines is being pushed back to 2035). Furthermore, the climate agenda is being affected, allowing the purchase of offsets outside the EU up to 3%, as well as the use of "high-quality international carbon credits" (although the goal of achieving a 90% emissions reduction by 2040 remains in place).

All of this represents a significant obstacle to sustainability transitions due to the weakening of ecological protection frameworks and the new barriers to changing unsustainable, inefficient, and inequitable production and consumption patterns. In this way, obstructive measures are being promoted to the benefit of the market system, economic interests, and the lobbies of productive sectors (industrial and agricultural), which are protected by conservative and populist political positions that are skeptical or, at their most extreme, deny climate and environmental agendas.

Structural risks and scientific data

When the euphemistic "discourse of simplification" is exploited for personal gain, it is not only politically risky but also contradictory to the situation reflected in scientific information and environmental and sustainability performance indicators. In the face of an increasingly complex situation, affected by multiple intertwined crises, now more than ever, we need to demand more forceful policies to address global warming, ecosystem degradation, pollution, and the wasteful linear model that leads to excessive resource consumption and waste generation.

The research and data speak for themselves. The year 2024 was the warmest on record, recording, for the first time, a 1.5°C increase compared to pre-industrial levels, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Global demand-side GHG emissions (GHG footprint) have increased by 33% since 2000 (OECD, 2025). Of the more than 100 billion tons of materials used in the global economy (accounting for more than 50% of the climate impact and more than 90% of biodiversity loss), only 6.9% is recovered and recirculated (Circle Economy, 2025). The overall pace is insufficient to achieve the 2030 Agenda objectives by 2030, with 16% of the targets on track to be met and 84% showing insufficient progress or setbacks (SDSN, 2025). In the case of the EU, the current status of the Green Deal reflects that of the 154 objectives, only 32 are in compliance, while 64 require acceleration to meet the planned schedule (JRC, 2025). According to the EEA, in the EU, the outlook for 2030 suggests that the current pace of progress will not be sufficient to meet the 2030 and 2050 environmental, climate, and energy targets (EEA, 2025). Likewise, European-level sustainability reports highlight the weaknesses of the environmental objectives and the prospects for non-compliance by 2030 (Eurostat, 2025).

The shift in European policy direction toward regulatory simplification is fostering an environmental setback that compromises European institutional credibility in matters of sustainability. Underlying the premise expressed by President von der Leyen that "we must be flexible and pragmatic," there is a risk of compromising the EU's social and environmental leadership. What is at stake is not only the technical content of certain regulations, which could be considered excessively complex, but also whether regulatory simplification gives way to deregulation and strategic policy changes, and even to a regression of the European governance model itself, in order to achieve the fully embraced major objective of "living well within safe planetary boundaries" (Eighth Environment Action Programme).

For a transformative and ambitious governance

As we have stated from these same pages, this great objective of the 21st century requires making viable the governance of a “family” of interconnected sustainability transitions (green-blue, circular, low-carbon economy) ( source 1 ) to face a great socio-ecological transformation in a context of planetary emergency derived from global change in the so-called Anthropocene era, although it is “the real era” of the Capitalocene ( source 2 ).

The EU risks calling into question its fundamental values and diluting its institutional coherence based on principles of intergenerational justice, ecological integrity, social cohesion, and sustainability, largely protected by regulatory certainty. A strategic shift to lower standards could erode the credibility of the green market and the circularity objective to make "sustainable products the norm" in the EU, as well as erode the approach of absolute decoupling of economic growth from the environmental impacts of resource use and waste. In addition to compromising the quality of life of Europeans, it penalizes companies that have already invested significantly in meeting environmental and corporate sustainability requirements, discouraging further investments in clean technology innovation and the development of circular and sustainable business models.

We cannot allow ourselves to slide into a dangerous ideological regression. The new narrative of regulatory simplification in favor of competitiveness must not become an excuse to retrace the path taken to consolidate the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability and subordinate them to the logic of the competitive market. Shifting from a political orientation committed to "sustainability and transformative resilience," as anticipated by the European Green Deal, to a "sustainability subordinated" to the imperative of competitiveness, security, and economic interests could seriously jeopardize the achievement of the major environmental goals of climate neutrality and ecological rebalancing by 2050. The challenge is great, but there are still possibilities to halt the regressionist trend supported by conservative forces. A determined progressive mobilization is now needed to reverse this trend that subordinates ecological commitment to the competitive economy. It is urgent to counterbalance policies that defend "environmental public goods" with the conservation of natural capital as the foundation of the economic system itself and of global well-being that will lead societies toward sustainable, coevolutionary progress.

This requires greater political ambition, with bold, inspiring, and committed leaders who, supported by scientific data and responsible citizenship, can incorporate effective controls on market powers so that the economy can operate efficiently in safe and equitable spaces within planetary boundaries.

Luis M. Jiménez Herrero is president of the Association for Sustainability and Progress of Societies (ASYPS), honorary professor at the UCM, and former director of the Sustainability Observatory in Spain (OSE).

1.- VIII Environmental Action Programme, OJ L 114 of 12.4.2022, p. 22 .

2.- OECD (2025), Environment at a Glance Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ac4b8b89-en . https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/environment-at-a-glance-indicators_ac4b8b89-en.html

3.- Circle Economy (2025), Circularity Gap Report 2025: A global call to action. https://www.circularity-gap.world/2025

4.- SDSN (2025), Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Sustainable Development Report 2025, reds-sdsn.es/informe-de-desarrollo-sostenible-2025-el-compromiso-mundial-con-los-ods-se-mantiene-fuerte/

5.- JRC (2025), Delivering the European Green Deal: JRC study finds mixed progress so far, https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/delivering-european-green-deal-jrc-study-finds-mixed-progress-so-far-2025-02-05_en?prefLang=es

6.- EEA, State of the environment in Europe, April 23, 2025 https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/at-a-glance/state-of-europes-environment

7.- EUROSTAT (2025). Sustainable development in the European Union Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context 2025 edition. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-flagship-publications/w/ks-01-24-018

8.- For a more detailed analysis, see Jiménez Herrero, L. M. (2023), Planetary Emergency and Socioecological Transition. Governing a Sustainable and Resilient Future in Alliance with Nature, Editorial Ecobook, Madrid, 2023. Governance to guide political action and decision-making with a focus mainly on sustainability, resilience, and natural capital.

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