Questions and answers on the environmental simplification package

GENERAL QUESTIONS

Why are you proposing this omnibus package on environmental legislation?

The Commission presented a simplification package to remove unnecessary administrative obligations and reduce complexity in the fields of industrial emissions, circular economy, environmental assessments and geospatial data.

It is part of the broader simplification efforts targeting complex requirements that create unnecessary burden. As part of this package, the Commission is proposing a Regulation to speed up environmental assessments, ensuring a common, coherent and simplified umbrella for faster and efficient procedures, assessing impacts on the environment, including impacts by development projects on habitats, birds and water, as well as human health.

The omnibus proposals are part of the Commission's response to Mario Draghi's report on the future of European competitiveness. The Draghi report highlighted the importance of transitioning to a low-carbon, resource-efficient, and circular economy to ensure the EU's long-term prosperity and competitiveness. Simplifying regulations and reducing administrative burdens are essential to meet these environmental objectives and to strengthen competitiveness. The Commission has set the goals of cutting administrative burden by at least 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs, while maintaining policy objectives in its Competitiveness Compass.

How will companies and SMEs benefit from this proposal?

Today's proposal does not change the EU's environmental objectives, but it allows business to meet them in a simpler way. It removes duplication and complex requirements so that companies and SMEs face less administrative burden when meeting the requirements of the concerned environmental legislation.

A Staff Working Document published today provides estimates of the gains for businesses, thanks to the measures proposed:

• Repealing the Substances of Concern in Products (SCIP) database for information on hazardous substances of concern: at least €225 million per year. The database lists all substances of very high concern (SVHCs) that manufacturers and importers have placed in articles or products placed on the EU market.
• Flexibility in the appointment of authorised representatives for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): €300 million per year.
• Simplification of Environmental Management Systems for industrial operators and other administrative elements in the scope of the Industrial Emissions Directive: €100 million per year.
• Reduced reporting requirements to the industrial emissions portal for livestock and aquaculture operators: €70 million per year.
• Reduced monitoring requirements for back-up generators under the Medium Combustion Plants Directive: €3 million per year.
• Simplification of data requirements under the INSPIRE Directive: €12 million per year (benefits both for businesses and public authorities).
• Streamlining and accelerating environmental assessments: €180 million per year.

In addition to the direct savings, there will be additional one-off costs savings of €35 million stemming from other technical amendments that cannot easily be compared to recurring cost savings that happen each year.

In addition, there are other smaller measures that collectively contribute tens of millions of euros in saving leading to a total estimated reduction in administrative burdens of around €1 billion per year for the full omnibus package. This includes, for example, amendments to the Medium Combustion Plant Directive to lighten the requirements for back-up generators supporting large data centres.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) will benefit from many amendments proposed today – directly or indirectly. For example, companies established in the EU will no longer be obliged to designate ‘authorised representatives for extended producer responsibility' in another Member State, where they are putting products on the market and are not established. This measure will benefit in particular smaller companies, for which the current requirements represent a considerable cost.

How does this proposal help achieve the objectives of EU environment legislation? Is it weakening environmental requirements?

Today's package aims to reduce administrative burden while maintaining existing environmental objectives and standards.

By cutting red tape and streamlining procedures, the cost of implementation will be reduced for businesses. For example, the Environmental Management System under the Industrial Emissions Directive is kept but made less burdensome to implement.

The proposed measures do not pose significant risks to the environment because they target administrative obligations without reducing environmental standards. Given that environmental objectives remain unchanged, the overall environmental impact of the package is neutral.

How did the Commission consult stakeholders and how were their comments taken on board?

In July 2025, the Commission published a call for evidence for the omnibus proposal which remained open for feedback for seven weeks (until 10 September). The Commission received more than 190,000 contributions, mostly from citizens but also more than 1,200 contributions from businesses, NGOs, public authorities and academics.

On 2 October, Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, Jessika Roswall, also met stakeholders from all main stakeholder groups at a roundtable meeting.

Environmental assessments and permitting were discussed with stakeholders during Commissioner Roswall's Implementation Dialogue in April 2025. The topic has also been discussed with Member States' experts at the environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment expert group on 13 June 2025.

On the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive, the Commission published a call for evidence and held a 12-weeks public consultation. The Directive creates a unified framework for sharing, accessing, and interoperating geographic (spatial) data across all Member States. This was complemented by additional ad hoc stakeholders' meetings.

Details on the consultations are provided in the accompanying Staff Working Document and its annexes.

The Commission conducted a careful, systematic review of all the inputs received. This analysis helped define the content of today's package.

Some suggestions were taken on board as part of new initiatives under preparation or being looked at in periodic evaluations of law. Other suggestions require more reflection as they are complex while others can be solved without recourse to legislative revision.

What is the Commission doing beyond the legislative proposal presented today?

The Commission is committed to continuing to exploit the full potential for simplification, stress testing EU legislation and working on effective implementation. The simplification process will continue throughout the next years, focusing on stress-testing, guidance and improving existing legislation.

For example, the Commission will present guidance on the application of key legislative pieces, starting with the PPWR, and water and nature legislation early next year. Simplification will be a key element in the Circular Economy Act and in the review of REACH. The Commission will also stress-test environmental rules, and will review and revise the Water Framework Directive, building on stakeholders' input and experiences in Member States, paying particular attention to simplification and the need to address potential bottlenecks, in order to promote circularity and access to critical raw materials in the EU, while protecting the environment and human health.

INDUSTRIAL INSTALLATIONS AND THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

What changes are proposed to ease administrative obligations for industrial installations?

The Industrial and Livestock Rearing Emissions Directive (IED) will be simplified for companies, allowing Environmental Management Systems (EMS) to be prepared at the company level rather than per installation. The content of EMS will also be simplified, in particular by deleting requirements for chemical inventories and indicative transformation plans.

The IED and the Medium Combustion Plants Directive will be adjusted to enable permitting of decarbonisation projects using oxy-fuel or hydrogen combustion. Compliance deadlines for certain new or revised provisions will be extended.

Livestock and aquaculture operators will be exempted from reporting on the use of water, energy and raw materials use under the Industrial Emissions Portal Regulation. Member States will be able to report more information on behalf of farmers on issues such as off-site transfers of waste and of pollutants in wastewater, on production volume and number of operating hours.

In addition, the Omnibus will bring targeted simplification on the calculation of the threshold for pig farms, and by removing organic poultry farms from scope, to avoid duplicative requirements.

What changes are proposed to ease administrative obligations for the circular economy?

The obligation to report SCIP-related data on hazardous substances in products will be repealed. The EU chemicals legislation, in particular the One Substance One Assessment package, and the digital product passport will progressively fulfil the envisaged role of the database, while avoiding duplication.

Producers selling products in Member States other than those where they are based will no longer be required to appoint an authorised representative in that Member State in relation to extended producer responsibility for waste management requirements. Those companies having already designated such representatives can continue to do so.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS AND PERMITTING

How is this package tackling permitting bottlenecks to help the competitiveness of European industry (whilst safeguarding environmental standards)?

The proposal for a Regulation on Speeding-up Environmental Assessments, as part of this package, will provide for combined assessments and swift procedures with defined and accelerated timelines, to ensure predictability and legal certainty. This will maintain robust environmental safeguards.

The Regulation will build on the existing environmental framework (the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (EIA), the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (SEA), the Habitats and Birds Directives and the Water Framework Directive) thereby preserving environmental standards. The Commission aims at ensuring that simplification and speed go hand in hand with environmental protection.

Further acceleration of procedures will be possible through digitalisation of environmental assessments as part of the overall permit-granting processes. This will ensure access to environmental assessments and their processing and to quality reusable data. 

The Commission is also proposing – in the Annex to the proposed Regulation – an additional toolbox for strategic projects. This toolbox would apply where existing or future EU legislation defines strategic sectors or categories of projects and aims to speed up permitting. This is provided that these projects contribute to the EU's resilience as well as decarbonisation or resource efficiency.

The elements of the toolbox include provisions and conditions for tacit approval for intermediate steps in the decision-making. It also includes a provision on how to balance for overriding public interest, helping the projects but not overruling environmental safeguards. Finally, there is also a provision on a more expedient judicial procedure in Member States for these strategic projects.

What changes are proposed for the INSPIRE Directive?

The Directive establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) aims to create a harmonised, interoperable spatial data infrastructure across Member States. However, the system is currently less effective and more costly than intended as the technical requirements for harmonisation of geospatial datasets have proven to be complex and expensive to implement.

Today's proposal aims to align the EU's environmental data sharing framework with  more recent horizontal EU datal legislation such as the Open Data Directive, the Data Governance Act, and the Interoperable Europe Act. This proposal is separate from the Digital Omnibus proposal, which consolidates data economy rules without changing the content of the Open Data Directive.

Key changes include replacing complex harmonisation requirements with more flexible, standards-based approaches, eliminating obsolete technical requirements and consolidating data access through a single EU open data portal.

The Commission proposes to remove rules on network services and simplify complex rules on interoperability as well as reporting requirements. Essential stakeholder coordination systems, data in scope of the Directive and rules for metadata should be retained. Using the existing open data systems will make things easier to manage and ensure environmental data is available in one simple, easy-to-use portal instead of multiple separate systems.

URBAN WASTEWATER TREATMENT

What is the result of the updated study on UWWTD and why is this not part of the Omnibus?

Today, the Commission also published in parallel to the omnibus package an updated study of the costs of the extended producer responsibility system under the recast Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and its potential impact on the concerned sectors. The updated study shows that costs are expected to be similar to estimates in the 2022 impact assessment, taking into account inflation, new data on costs and the differences between the final Directive and the original Commission proposal.

Conducted by the Joint Research Centre, this study was a commitment under the Water Resilience Strategy. Its outcome means that the potential increase of costs of products or the potential reduction of the profit margins of the industries placing products on the Union market due to the application of extended producer responsibility are expected to be in line with assessments during the legislative procedure.

As indicated in the Directive (recital 21), and if necessary for specific medicines in specific Member States, the Commission expects Member States to take into consideration the possible impacts of the application of the requirements of the extended producer responsibility on the accessibility, availability and affordability of products at national level, in particular medicines, placed on the Union market, as well as the possible impacts of the application of those requirements on the level playing field.

The Commission will continue to work with Member States on the implementation of the Directive.

For more information

Press release

Factsheet

Environmental simplification package