Who killed the directive?

You’re reading Rapporteur on Tuesday 28 April. This is Eddy Wax, joined by Nicoletta Ionta in Brussels.

Need-to-knows:

🟢 Why the EU directive is becoming a rare species🟢 Parliament gears up for a major budget vote🟢 Belgium’s coalition rattled by upcoming Taliban talks

On the roundabout: How Péter Magyar’s mother has impacted Parliament’s procedures

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From the capital

Is it time to prepare a funeral for the ubiquitous EU directive? Long a hallmark of the bloc’s lawmaking, directives have appealed to governments by allowing valuable wiggle room to interpret edicts from Brussels.

Now, the once-dominant instrument is under attack from two sides. A sudden thirst for deregulation from leaders like Friedrich Merz is converging with a fresh sense of urgency to deepen the single market.

“Before, the default was a directive and regulation was the exception,” said Stéphane Séjourné, the EU’s single market chief. “Now it must be the opposite,” he told Rapporteur. Unlike directives, regulations are immediately applicable across the bloc.

“Directives are either badly transposed, under-transposed or over-transposed,” the French commissioner said. “They are rarely transposed in an equivalent way across EU member states. For all these reasons it’s a factor contributing to the fragmentation in the single market.” In policy areas where the EU holds all the cards, he argued, there should be “no more” directives.

The examples are all around us. My colleague Maximilian Henning reported first about the decision to make EU Inc. – a flagship law to boost start ups – a regulation, not a directive. Angelo di Mambro, our agriculture editor, pointed to a big waste packaging law that was switched from a directive to a regulation last year. The EU’s big deportations law was upgraded from a directive to a regulation. Séjourné’s colleague Henna Virkkunen has argued that digital policy should rely exclusively on regulations in future.

It’s unclear if this shift will be enough to sate the hunger for the slashing of red tape.

Ursula von der Leyen came under pressure from her own centre-right allies in the CDU on Monday in Berlin to slash more EU rules, faster. “We have had extensive discussions at the European level about avoiding what we call ‘gold-plating’ – adding extra layers of regulation at the national level,” she told reporters. “This often results in 27 different sets of rules across member states, creating a significant bureaucratic burden.” Yet gold-plating can still occur under regulations, and often does.

Is a regulation-only era a power grab by Brussels? Not necessarily, Séjourné said. Regulations themselves can include enforcement carried out at the national level, he argued. “The regulation really aims for all of us to have the same rules, among us.”

Read my full interview with Séjourné.

Major budget vote looms

MEPs are set to vote today on an interim report outlining Parliament’s negotiating position on the bloc’s next seven-year budget, reports Victoria Becker, our budget reporter.

The text – drafted by co-rapporteurs Carla Tavares, a Socialist, and Siegfried Mureșan from the EPP – proposes a 10% increase to the Commission’s proposed €2 trillion budget for 2028–2034. It also calls for keeping repayments of Covid-era debt outside the core budget, introducing new EU revenue streams – including a digital levy for Big Tech – and stronger protections for key spending areas such as agriculture and regional policy.

“We propose a European budget that is both sufficient and predictable for beneficiaries,” Mureșan said. “Through a moderate 10% increase, we ensure adequate resources for new priorities such as defence and competitiveness, while fully preserving key policies.”

If approved in plenary, the report will become Parliament’s official mandate for upcoming talks with the Council. But we all know that it’s the national governments who really matter.

Taliban invite sparks Belgian uproar

Plans to invite Taliban representatives for talks in Brussels before the summer – coordinated by Belgium with the Commission and Sweden – have rattled the Belgian government and sparked tensions within the ruling coalition.

While Belgium may facilitate visas under its “host country” obligations, Euractiv first reported that the invitation would not formally come from Belgium. Maxime Prévot, the foreign minister, has been reluctant to extend such an invitation directly, underscoring the political sensitivities of the move.

The issue has sparked fierce backlash in the Belgian Parliament. Last week, Prévot told MPs that Belgium does not recognise the Taliban and would normally refuse visas, except where required to support international institutions. Anneleen Van Bossuyt, the migration minister who coordinated the plans, has also received criticism.

No more hiding online, Greece says

Greece is moving to curb online toxicity by advancing plans to end anonymity on social media, with Dimitris Papastergiou, the minister for digital governance, arguing users should be identified even if they operate under pseudonyms.

Speaking at the Delphi Economic Forum last week, he said the initiative, now being handled within Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s office, aims to fight coordinated harassment, disinformation and hate speech that authorities say are often driven by anonymous accounts.

While the government insists the proposal would not abolish pseudonyms, it would require platforms to verify that each profile corresponds to a real individual. Read the full story by Sarantis Michalopoulos.

Farmers want fertiliser help

EU farm ministers called for immediate measures from Brussels to help farmers deal with fertiliser price shocks caused by the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, three diplomats told Alice Bergöend. Read her piece.

AI Act crunch talks

Negotiators will try to hammer out a deal on simplifying the EU’s flagship law for regulating artificial intelligence. But it could be derailed by questions of how it should apply to different industrial sectors. Maximilian Henning is all over it for tech PRO subscribers.

Hands off our crypto, Brussels told

National governments are pushing back against the Commission’s proposal to centralise supervision of cryptocurrency firms, dealing a blow to Brussels’ push to boost oversight of the fast-growing but opaque sector.

A Cyprus presidency note states that capitals oppose proposals to place all crypto-asset service providers under the direct supervision of the European Securities and Markets Authority, the bloc’s Paris-based financial watchdog.

The document cites “concerns regarding proportionality,” and finance ministers will discuss it in Brussels next week. Read the full story by Thomas Møller-Nielsen.

Schuman roundabout

It’s a Hungary special today

MAGYAR’S MUM: A request to lift the parliamentary immunity of Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch was announced on Monday following a defamation complaint linked to a dispute over judicial impartiality involving Mónika Erőss, the mother of Hungarian PM-elect Péter Magyar. “Unlike your dear son, however, I will not hide behind immunity, so we will meet in court,” Deutsch said ahead of the announcement.

ORBÁN IS BACK: But not that Orbán. Fidesz campaign manager Balázs Orbán is set to take up a seat in the European Parliament from July, Hungarian media reported. He will replace Pál Szekeres, who’ll return to be an MP.

DOBREV’S REPLY: Klára Dobrev, the Socialist Hungarian MEP, replied to the mass email from a Tisza MEP we reported on in Monday’s newsletter. In an email, she wrote: “I am prepared to face any legal proceedings,” and doubled down on her allegations that senior Tisza officials were involved in spying on EU institutions for Russia.

The capitals

VIENNA 🇦🇹

Austria’s coalition leaders on Monday evening unveiled a preliminary agreement on the 2027–28 budget, setting out measures to bring the country back into line with EU fiscal rules after it was placed under an excessive deficit procedure in 2024. The plan targets €5.1 billion in savings over two years, split broadly evenly between spending cuts and additional revenue measures.– Jakob Ploteny

BERLIN 🇩🇪

Friedrich Merz said Iran’s leadership is effectively humiliating the US, arguing Washington lacks a convincing strategy or clear exit from the conflict, according to state broadcaster DW. He warned the crisis is weighing heavily on Germany’s economy and reiterated Berlin’s conditional offer to deploy minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz. Merz also urged stronger EU unity, saying the bloc could rival US power if it acted collectively.– Christina Zhao

ROME 🇮🇹

Italy’s governing coalition is split over the Stability Pact after the League (Patriots for Europe) pushed for a unilateral exit to fund relief for households and businesses facing high energy costs. Deputy PM Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia/EPP) swiftly ruled out any breach of EU fiscal rules, instead advocating use of the European Stability Mechanism’s €400 billion capacity. Parliament is expected to back a targeted energy spending derogation.– Alessia Peretti

MADRID 🇪🇸

Civil Guard investigators told the Supreme Court of Spain that former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos was a “centrepiece” of an alleged criminal network seeking commissions from public contracts. Testifying on Monday, they said the group had “quick and direct access to high-level bodies,” including Pedro Sánchez due to Ábalos’ influence within the government and ruling Socialist party (PSOE).– Inés Fernández-Pontes

ATHENS 🇬🇷

An S&D spokesperson expressed “serious” concern over Greece’s rule of law after the Supreme Court declined to reopen the so-called “Greek Watergate” wiretapping case. The scandal, which surfaced in 2019, involved illegal use of Predator spyware targeting politicians, journalists and business figures. Opposition parties allege government involvement, while legal experts have criticised the ruling as an unprecedented institutional failure.– Sarantis Michalopoulos

BRATISLAVA 🇸🇰

Slovakia’s opposition Progressive Slovakia said it had obtained a letter from the European Commission urging the Agriculture Ministry to place the Agricultural Paying Agency on probation. According to the PS, the letter cited conflicts of interest and systemic shortcomings, proposing flat-rate financial corrections that could reduce EU subsidies where losses cannot be precisely quantified or recovered.– Natália Silenská & Marián Koreň

SARAJEVO 🇧🇦

More than 40 NGOs have opposed Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Southern Gas Interconnector project, warning it could deepen dependence on fossil fuels, including liquefied natural gas, and undermine climate targets. The project, involving a US company linked to Donald Trump’s circle, has also raised concerns in Brussels, where officials caution it could jeopardise access to EU Growth Plan funding and related financial support.– Bronwyn Jones

Also on Euractiv

With a year to go before France’s next presidential contest, Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte have struck an unusually reflective tone, acknowledging the personal toll of nearly a decade at the Élysée as the succession battle gathers pace.

Barred from seeking a third term in 2027, Macron signalled he would quit politics after office, while his presidency faces a contested legacy shaped by domestic unrest, political deadlock and an unsettled reform record.

Euractiv columnist Konstantin Eggert warns that the Kremlin’s decision to stage a “Polish Russophobia” exhibition at the Katyn memorial – where thousands of Poles murdered by the Soviet NKVD are buried – marks a deliberate escalation in Russia’s historical revisionism and political signalling.

In his latest op-ed, Eggert argues that, alongside symbolic acts and legal changes expanding grounds for military action abroad, this narrative is aimed not only at tightening control at home but at testing Western resolve, particularly in Central Europe and the Baltic states.

Contributors: Magnus Lund Nielsen, Thomas Møller-Nielsen, Maximilian Henning, Angelo Di Mambro, Alice Bergöend

Editors: Christina Zhao, Sofia Mandilara, Bruno Waterfield