Shortly after the publication of its Competitiveness Compass, the European Commission further clarified its ambitions for the coming year and mandate with the unveiling of its Work Programme and a Communication on the Union’s next seven-year budget. Industrial competitiveness, efficiency, and simplification appear to be at the core of these plans. However, ahead of the publication of the EU’s Omnibus simplification package on 26 February, a key piece of legislation aimed at reducing administrative burdens by 25% for businesses and 35% for SMEs, some observers have raised concerns that such measures could result in deregulation and a scaling back of the EU’s decarbonisation, climate, and environmental objectives.

On 12 February, the European Commission released its 2025 Work Programme, setting out the key strategies, action plans and legislative initiatives to be undertaken during the first year of the mandate, and in accordance with the priorities outlined in Ursula von der Leyen’s Political Guidelines in July 2024. Thus, competitiveness, security, economic resilience and innovation stand at its core, with simplification and the reduction of administrative burden appearing as key to enforce efficiently those objectives.

Looking at the key initiatives of the year ahead with relevance to clean energy research, it however appears that the majority of policies related to innovation deal with cybertechnologies. On decarbonisation and energy, the Action Plan on Affordable Energy, and the Clean Industrial Deal constitute the European Commission’s main priorities, with the latter described as outlining urgent, short-term strategies to create favourable conditions for industry to regain competitiveness while accomplishing decarbonisation. Lastly, the European Climate Law amendment, meant to set a 2040 greenhouse gas emission reduction target, is now scheduled for the first quarter of the year, in line with previous communications, but diverging from a leaked draft version which had announced it for later in the year.  

In a similar forward-planning and simplification effort, the European Commission notably published on the same day a Communication titled ‘The Road to the next Multiannual Financial Framework' (MFF), detailing the main policies and budgets that will shape the EU’s next seven-year budget, running from 2028 to 2034. The Commission is expected to present its MFF proposal in July 2025, and is currently gathering feedback on the topic through a Citizens’ Panel and public consultations.

The Communication unsurprisingly states the EU’s objective to maximise the impact of every euro spent, with a simpler and more focused budget, fostering more synergies and contributing to unlocking private investments to finance the green, digital and social transitions. The publication also calls for increased flexibility to address crises, in a context characterised by geopolitical tensions, climate-related disasters and the global competitiveness race. It notably mentions the awaited creation of a European Competitiveness Fund, which should support strategic sectors and critical technologies, including research and innovation, but does not offer more details on its architecture.

Recent discussions on the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), set to take effect in 2026 and impose tariffs on CO₂ emissions linked to imported goods, offer a prime example of the potential tensions between the Commission’s decarbonisation and simplification objectives. Indeed, citing that 20% of companies account for 97% of CO₂ emissions, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra recently revealed that the Commission is considering scaling back CBAM to cover only this 20% in order to ease the regulatory burden on other businesses.

In addition, following pushback from several member states, including Germany, the EU may further revise some other legislations part of the Green Deal such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) which could partly undermine the Union’s ambitions for the energy transition. On 4 February, a joint statement by several investor groups representing approximately €6.6 trillion assets warned that a full-scale reworking of the EU’s sustainability reporting requirements could backfire. According to the statement, repelling the rules could further dissuade the industries the EU would like to attract, and hinder needed investments in clean technologies by creating regulatory uncertainty.  

In parallel, the European Parliament is also experiencing pushback against the Green Deal with several MEPs from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and European People’s Party (EPP) groups calling to cut the EU’s LIFE programme funds by €15,6 million, which benefit environmental NGOs, in the form of operating grants. The members of Parliament notably accused the Commission’s Directorate General for Environment to have secretly paid NGOs to lobby for more ambitious green policies, with the money from LIFE, whose reputation is coming under attack, despite constituting the only EU funding programme solely dedicated to environmental, climate and energy objectives. These recent developments came after several blows were already dealt to the Green Deal last year, with the adoption of a weakened version of the Nature Restoration Law, the agreement to a one-year delay in implementing the Deforestation Regulation, and the growing calls to repel the ban on thermic engines in 2035, leaving the clean energy community scrutinising the EU’s green action as closely as ever.