Consultations for Environmental Omnibus

On 22 July 2025, the European Commission (EC) launched a Call for Evidence in preparation of its forthcoming Environmental Omnibus Proposal. The proposal aims to simplify and streamline administrative requirements related to the environment especially in the areas of waste, products, and industrial emissions, and reduce the administrative burden placed on companies, without affecting the policy objectives pursued by the legislation. We give an overview of this Omnibus and how stakeholkders can participate.

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What is a Call for Evidence and how does it impact EU’s policy making?  

A Call for Evidence is an early-stage consultation tool used by the EC to gather feedback from stakeholders before drafting new legislation. Unlike later-stage consultations, a Call for Evidence focuses on the scope and direction of a proposal rather than detailed legal provisions. In this case, the Commission has published a Call for Evidence without impact assessment, because the envisaged initiative aims to carry out targeted simplification measures reducing administrative burden and bringing about administrative efficiencies with little to no impact on the underlying policies, and because the changes relate to recently adopted legislation where impact assessments were already carried out, an impact assessment is not deemed necessary. This clearly indicates that the Commission does not intend to change the content of the legislative acts but rather focuses on pure administrative simplification.

Besides this initial call for evidence, the Commission will also consult stakeholders through Expert Groups and Forums, and targeted consultations may be undertaken in order to inform the Commission’s work on the initiative. The Call for Evidence will be open until 10 September 2025. Once the deadline is reached, all submissions will be reviewed by Commission services and summarised in the staff working document that will be published together with the upcoming proposal, which is expected to be adopted before the end of the year (Q4 2025).

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What is the Environmental Omnibus?

The initiative is part of the EC’s push for simplification, following the EC President’s Political Guidelines for 2024-29 and the Competitiveness Compass, which placed great importance not only on the implementation of the adopted legislations, but also on the need for simplification to make EU laws more effective and to create a regulatory environment where business can flourish.

The Commission is currently screening environmental laws to identify legislative acts that has potential to be simplified. The aim is to make the various legislation more effective by reducing administrative burdens and avoidable costs (especially for SMEs), without affecting the environmental objectives that have already been agreed under the existing legislation.

The focus of the Environmental Omnibus is on environmental legislation in the areas of circular economy, industrial emissions and waste management. Following the input from stakeholders, the EC will adopt measures to simplify legislative acts in these areas. The EC has mentioned some potential measures in its call for evidence and has mentioned that the list of measures could evolve depending on stakeholder feedback and further analysis: the discontinuation of the SCIP (substances of concern in products) database under the Waste Framework Directive; the harmonisation of the provisions for authorised representatives for EPR (extended producer responsibility) and on facilitation of EPR reporting; streamlining of the reporting obligations, removal of double requirements to report, promotion of further digitalisation of reporting in the area of circular economy, industrial emissions and waste management, and addressing permitting challenges relating to environment assessments.

There is no explicit mention of the Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) or the Forced Labour Regulation (FLR), both of which were rumoured to be included in the Environmental Omnibus.

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How can Stakeholders get involved?

All stakeholders, including businesses, SMEs, public bodies, non-governmental organisations, international organisations, and academia can submit written feedback through the Commission’s Have Your Say portal until 10 September 2025 at midnight (Brussels time). All contributions will be published online. We strongly encourage stakeholders to share their views and feedback in this call for evidence. The Cattwyk team will be happy to support you upon request.