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On 10 December 2025, the European Commission presented a package of measures to simplify environmental legislation in the areas of industrial emissions, circular economy, environmental assessments and geospatial data.
The aim of the changes is to ease the administrative burden for businesses, while keeping the EU’s ambitious objectives to protect the environment and human health (eg, the European Green Deal). Key features include:
- streamlined environmental assessments for granting permits;
- simplified industrial emissions standards for industry and farmers; and
- simplified extended producer responsibility.
Despite expectations that amendments to the recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive would be included in this omnibus package, that was not the case. The reason given by the European Commission, in the Q&A accompanying the announcement of the package, was that a study by the Joint Research Centre shows that costs of extended producer responsibility 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.
The proposal is now with the European Parliament and European Council. The European Commission has stated that it will continue to work towards simplification of existing legislation beyond this package of measures and further proposals are awaited.
We are continuing to monitor the progress of this proposal and the EU’s simplification programme.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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