Brussels wanted less red tape. It hasn't proved as easy as that.

Summary

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Brussels Playbook Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Title: Brussels wanted less red tape. It hasn't proved as easy as that.
Date: May 20, 2026
Hosts: Ian Wishart (POLITICO), Katherine Carlson (Senior Finance Reporter, POLITICO)
Duration: ~14 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the EU’s recent and ongoing struggles with its ambitious campaign to cut bureaucratic “red tape.” Highlighting the complexities behind high-profile deregulatory efforts, Ian Wishart and Katherine Carlson discuss why simplifying the EU rulebook hasn’t worked as intended, touch on a proposed change to the EU’s Russia sanctions system, and – in a curious political twist – discuss a local Italian crisis over peacocks turned partisan. The conversation, marked by clear reporting and friendly banter, brings to life how policies and powerplays across Brussels and beyond are shaping the day.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Red Tape Reduction: A Messier Reality

[00:27–06:11]

• Background:
  The Commission, under Ursula von der Leyen, launched a major initiative to cut down on EU rules and streamline processes, aiming to boost competitiveness against economies like the US and China.

• Omnibus Deregulation Push:
  The “omnibus” legislative strategy bundles multiple regulatory rollbacks, such as:

  • Loosening water, chemical, and environmental permitting laws (to enable new mines)
  • Weakening restrictions on cancer-linked chemicals in cosmetics
  • Facilitating easier approval processes for industrial projects at the expense of wildlife protections

• Controversies and Complications:

  • Scrapping key health, safety, and environmental regulations sparked immediate backlash and alarm.
  • The rapid process excluded technical experts (“to avoid slowdowns”), but that has backfired since the regulations are complex and interconnected.

• Policy-Making Shortcuts Create New Bottlenecks:

  • Member states formed a “squad” of diplomats (the Antici Group) to fast-track simplification without technical expertise.
  • Now, faced with regulatory complexities, the group has begun calling in experts after all.
  • Pressure is mounting: Ten omnibus packages must be agreed by year-end, creating tension between speed and policy quality.

• Quote:

  • “Simplifying is actually quite complicated.” — Katherine Carlson, [03:34]
  • “If you were in charge of drawing up the rules, you wouldn’t necessarily be the best person to get rid of the rules.” — Ian Wishart, [03:54]

2. EU Sanctions on Russia: Extending the Renewal Cycle

[06:11–10:00]

• Sanctions Process:
  Traditionally, the EU must renew its Russia sanctions every six months, which requires unanimous consent of all 27 member states and thus provides massive leverage to any single country.

• Post-Orban Dynamics:

  • Viktor Orbán’s ouster in Hungary has changed the calculus, as his government often blocked or delayed renewals.
  • The EU is considering extending the renewal period to once a year to minimize administrative burden and reduce leverage of potential holdouts.
  • Leaders will discuss the proposal at June’s European Council.
  • Benefits: Reduces political drama and uncertainty for the EU and Ukraine, and streamlines policymaking.

• Potential Hurdles:

  • All 27 countries must agree—Slovakia and Czechia are uncertain.
  • Even without Orban, unanimous consent is never guaranteed.

• Quote:

  • “It only takes one country…to say, actually, I don’t agree to these sanctions being renewed, and then they all fall apart.” — Katherine Carlson, [07:14]

• Forthcoming:

  • 21st package of Russia sanctions (targeting banks, defense, stolen Ukrainian grain) expected late June/early July.

3. Peacocks in Italy: Local Problem, National Politics

[10:11–12:39]

• Local Story, National Spin:

  • Punta Marina, a beach town on Italy’s Adriatic coast, is overrun with over 100 peacocks (up from about 10 in 2018), following a post-Covid “procreation boom.”
  • The birds’ noise, droppings, and nighttime mating calls are infuriating locals.

• Political Fallout:

  • The national right-wing party (Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni) is blaming the left-wing local council for mishandling the crisis.
  • The issue has escalated into public political debate and party rivalry.

• Memorable Moments and Levity:

  • Live audio of peacock mating calls adds some humor to the episode.
  • Hosts reflect on the absurdity of “avian issues” reaching national significance.

• Quote:

  • “Look, you dunk on the peacocks, it’s a vote winner.” — Katherine Carlson, [12:20]

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Listener Mail & Community Engagement

[12:39–13:50]

• Listeners nominate names for the “European Order of Merit”:

  • Giacomo from Italy nominates Professor Manuel Desantis, renowned for inspiring generations of intellectual property law students.
  • Yanush from Rome nominates Mario Draghi, pointedly refusing to nominate Angela Merkel (“Putin enabler” — listener’s words, not POLITICO's).

• Reminder that the hosts welcome quirky animal stories and listener feedback on light-hearted segments.

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Notable Quotes & Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote / Context | |-----------|-----------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:34 | Katherine Carlson | “Simplifying is actually quite complicated.” | | 03:54 | Ian Wishart | “If you were in charge of drawing up the rules, you wouldn’t necessarily be the best person to get rid of the rules.” | | 07:14 | Katherine Carlson | “It only takes one country…to say, actually, I don’t agree to these sanctions being renewed, and then they all fall apart.” | | 12:20 | Katherine Carlson | “Look, you dunk on the peacocks, it’s a vote winner.” | | 13:32 | Yanush (listener) | “I would award Mario Draghi; certainly not Merkel, alas, a Putin enabler.” (Read aloud by Katherine Carlson – explicit listener opinion) |

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Tone & Style

• Conversational & Insightful: Hosts blend policy depth with engaging back-and-forth, often punctuated by dry humor about Brussels process and local quirks.
• Accessible & Transparent: Explains complex procedural issues in plain language.
• Light-Hearted Moments: The peacock story and listener mail infuse levity without detracting from the gravitas of EU decision-making.

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Conclusion

This episode captures the real-world headaches behind grand ambitions for EU simplification, highlighting ongoing institutional frictions and the unpredictable aftershocks of personnel changes like Orban’s departure. The peacock story cleverly illustrates how seemingly trivial issues can become enmeshed in local and national politics—emphasizing that, in Brussels and beyond, the everyday and the extraordinary often collide.

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Transcript

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[Ian Wishart]

Good morning. It's Wednesday the 20th of May, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast. The vibe in Brussels today is not so fast. The EU has been on a push to slash red tape, but now it realizes perhaps it's been a bit too

[Katherine Carlson]

hasty and is calling in the experts.

[Ian Wishart]

Also on the podcast today, the EU is considering making the period between needing

[Katherine Carlson]

to renew sanctions on countries like Russia longer. That's another side effect, a positive side effect, as much as Brussels sees it, of Orban losing the election in Hungary.

[Ian Wishart]

And we talk peacocks in Italy. Proper peacocks are becoming political peacocks. We give you a precis. I'm Ian Wishart and with me today is POLITICO's senior finance reporter, Katherine Carlson. Hello, Katie.

[Katherine Carlson]

Hi, Ian.

[Ian Wishart]

You said you were very enthusiastic about talking about peacocks, didn't you?

[Katherine Carlson]

I would like to clarify, I said once in one meeting that peacocks are cool.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, given you normally write about market integration, supervision package, I think I can understand why you see peacocks as being cool.

[Katherine Carlson]

They're majestic birds. Who doesn't like peacocks? Apart from the people we're going to talk about later?

[Ian Wishart]

We'll find out who doesn't.

[Katherine Carlson]

Exactly.

[Ian Wishart]

But let's start with a more serious story. As our first story today, it's about

[Katherine Carlson]

the inner workings of the eu and actually it's really interesting because it shows how big political initiatives can sometimes fall foul of. Of technical realities. As you know, Katie, a big thing since Ursula von der Leyen was reappointed as commissioner President a couple of years ago is the Commission's campaign to get rid of red tape. So the plan has been to strip away a lot of EU rules to simplify them, make things easier for business. The idea being to create this sort of more dynamic economy that can compete with the likes of the US and China. All of that sounds good in theory. In practice, that's not been so easy. Katie, do you want to, before we go into what's actually maybe going wrong, talk about some examples of where this deregulation is supposed to be happening?

Oh, yeah. Ever since Wonderly and came back around again, we have all been on board the omnibus whether we want to or not.

Yeah, the omnibus is a ridiculous piece of EU jargon.

It just means you're changing a bunch of laws. Essentially, that's been the aim of it. So some of the ones that the Commission's put out this time around have been a push to loosen water and chemical and permitting laws to allow for building more new mines. And they have wanted to weaken rules on cancer linked chemicals in cosmetics.

Already I'm seeing why some of this might be controversial.

And they want to make it easier to kill wildlife, to build industrial projects.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, what a surprise that maybe some

[Katherine Carlson]

of this hasn't been quite so easy.

[Ian Wishart]

One of the priorities of this red

[Katherine Carlson]

tape slashing was it had to be done fast. That was sort of the whole raison d' etre here. The Commission didn't want the process of getting rid of rules to be bogged down in its own red tape. But that's kind of been the problem because the member states formed this squad of diplomats, but they intentionally didn't include experts in this group. Our colleague Marianne Gross has been reporting on this today. Katie, tell us about this group.

Yeah, so it turns out that simplifying is actually quite complicated. I mean, the whole idea behind this was that you take away the red tape slashing responsibilities from the kinds of people who are normally writing the laws, the national diplomats, so that they're not too bogged down in the details, so that they don't have pet issues, so that they don't get, you know, dragged down by all of the.

[Ian Wishart]

You can see, if you were in

[Katherine Carlson]

charge of drawing up the rules, you wouldn't necessarily be the best person to get rid of the rules.

Exactly. It makes total sense on paper that you put it in the hands of people who are a bit more removed and have a bit more vision and can just get rid of the damn stuff. Except it hasn't exactly worked out that way. So the people who are in charge of it, it's a small group of European diplomats, these are the sort of right hand men of EU ambassadors that are called the antici groups. Experts weren't looped into that group so that technical discussions wouldn't slow things down. And as Maryam reports, it turns out that a lot of these are very complicated and important regulations that actually could have benefited from the input of experts.

Yeah, especially when it comes to big controversial things like the impact on human health. And some of those examples you gave earlier, Katie, shows why those alarm bells started ringing. Because they were rules that were being stripped away that had this effect on health or because of environmental concerns.

Yeah. I mean, cancer, pesticides, wildlife. This is the kind of important stuff that you don't want to mess around with just for the sake of shortening the process. And to add to all of that, the negotiators are under a time crunch. There's pressure from EU leaders to agree on all of these omnibus proposals. There's 10 of them by the end of this year. So they're always on this constant tightrope of working fast, but also trying to think about the proper ramifications of the deregulation that they're doing.

And as Marianne is reporting, actually, in the end, this group, the Antici Group, has called in experts, after all.

Yeah. So Marianne spoke to five diplomats who said that the group actually is relying on experts back home and that the delegations want backup from their governments to examine all of the proposals. So slightly contradictory to the initial aims.

[Ian Wishart]

Yeah. So the reason we're talking about this, I think, is because it's a really

[Katherine Carlson]

good example of how, as I said, these big political initiatives are sometimes more complicated than at first they might seem. And you have these big announcements in the commission and the commission president announces them, and then, as usual, the EU works in mysterious ways and actually can be quite difficult. But it's a really good. If you're interested in the way that EU policy is made and also how EU politics gets reflected in policy. It's a really interesting story to read out on our website today.

[Ian Wishart]

Also today, Katie, we're going to talk about sanctions.

[Katherine Carlson]

Obviously, it's been in the news quite a lot. Zoya and Nick on Monday talked about how Russia is often managing to circumvent EU sanctions.

[Ian Wishart]

Nevertheless, the EU is still forging ahead

[Katherine Carlson]

with what it calls its 21st package. So that's like the latest round of sanctions on Russia. Our colleague Bjarke Smith Meyer actually is writing a story today about how the process could change, isn't he?

Yeah. So he's written about how EU leaders are talking about changing the timeframe for how often they renew these sanctions. It's been received wisdom until now that the sanctions are usually renewed every six months.

[Ian Wishart]

I think people outside of the EU

[Katherine Carlson]

who are just used to working with national governments might be quite surprised at that. I mean, normally you're used to government saying, okay, we're putting sanctions on people, but because of how the EU works, and it's made up of 27 national governments, you actually have to have these milestones, these times where people say, actually, let's Think about this again. Are we still all okay with this?

Exactly. Everybody has to agree on it, and everybody has to keep agreeing to keep agreeing on it, essentially, for those sanctions to stay.

And it only takes one country, doesn't it, to say, actually, I don't agree to this. All these sanctions being renewed, and then they all fall apart, they all collapse.

Exactly. And that's what we've seen plenty of times over the last few years from small groups of countries led by Orban. I mean, it's incredible leverage to be able to sit at a table of 27 leaders and say, I'm going to screw all of your plans for all of your massive sanctions packages. I mean, we're up to 20 packages at this point. It's a huge amount of leverage to be able to hold in your hand every six months if you want to. And they definitely made the most of that before Orban was ousted.

Yeah. So we've talked about so much about what's happened since Viktor Orban has stopped being prime minister of Hungary. And this is just another side effect of that. It's actually now the EU can sit down and say, actually, do we really want to have to renew sanctions every six months? And as Bjarke is reporting, they're looking at doing that every year, every year instead.

And that will be discussed at the European Council in June. If it's going to happen. It's a possibility. We'll have to see what actually plays out at that discussion.

There's sort of a lot of benefits to that for leaders. Bjarke is talking about how actually it's quite a big burden administratively for the EU to have to do this every six months. It's a big political thing, and it's such a lot of tension every six months to say, are we going to have to renew sanctions? Prolonging it to a year is actually. You can see why that's quite beneficial, can't you?

Especially now that the commission is continuing to work on more sanctions packages against Russia. They've got all this other sanctions policy work in the pipeline. It basically, you know, as we were talking about before, just makes everything a lot simpler.

But also for Ukraine, for example, it creates a lot of uncertainty every six months. It doesn't know exactly what the EU strategy is going to be.

And it's not only about the sanctions themselves, it's about the other policies that have been brought to the table to use as leverage in return for continuing sanctions.

So even this, though, would have to be done by unanimity. All 27 countries would have to agree that the sanctions renewal period would be a year rather than six months. Still no guarantee that that would be the case. We know that Slovakia and Czechia, for example, are still a little bit uncertain just, you know, whether they would sign up to it. So having Orban removed helps, but it's not necessarily a fait accompli yet, is it?

Yeah, I mean, Orban was the trailblazer for this. He was often bringing countries along with him. It's going to be an open question once we get to June of how much those other countries might want to pipe up and try to preserve that leverage for themselves.

[Ian Wishart]

So just before we stop talking about this, just let's mention that There is

[Katherine Carlson]

this 21st package of sanctions on Russia.

[Ian Wishart]

The plan is a target.

[Katherine Carlson]

Things like Russian banks, financial institutions, firms selling stolen Ukrainian grain could take aim at the Russian defense industry. They're things that the EU found quite difficult to do while Orban was still in charge.

Yep. And we're expecting that possibly in late June or early July.

[Ian Wishart]

Lovely, Katie. So, shall we talk about peacocks? It's the moment you've been waiting for.

[Katherine Carlson]

I never don't want to talk about peacocks.

[Ian Wishart]

Ian, you are our unofficial peacock correspondent. Is that. Did I hear that right?

[Katherine Carlson]

I reiterate. I said I like peacocks once. News travels fast around me.

[Ian Wishart]

Okay, tell us about this story.

[Katherine Carlson]

So this is a story about a place called Punta Marina. It's a beach town on Italy's Adriatic coast coast. It's having a bit of a avian issue right now, which is that it's avian issue. Avian issue. Which is it's completely overrun with peacocks that are apparently making everyday life unbearable for locals. They are talking about damage from droppings on their roofs and their cars, sleepless nights caused by peacock mating calls. Which, thanks to the glory of an audio format, I believe we can listen to a peacock mating call right now.

[Ian Wishart]

Oh, no. Well, on the off chance that you use this podcast to wake up to. That's a good alarm call. Yes. So, Katie. So it sounds like that. Katie, noises like that that have been

[Katherine Carlson]

annoying people in this Italy town. Tell us where the politics comes in.

Can I tell you why there's so many peacocks in the town?

[Ian Wishart]

Do that first. Yes, tell us why there's so many peacocks in this town.

[Katherine Carlson]

Apparently the peacocks benefited from a Covid boom because lockdown. Everybody being away in their houses allowed for them to thrive and procreate. No one knows how they really arrived in the town in the first place, but There used to be about 10 in 2018, and there's now over a hundred.

[Ian Wishart]

It wasn't just peacocks that used to procreate during COVID lockdowns, was it?

[Katherine Carlson]

I'm not asking about your personal life, Ian.

[Ian Wishart]

So why are we talking about this at Politico where we only talk about politicians?

[Katherine Carlson]

Because inevitably, politics has got dragged into this. So Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy, who belongs to the Brothers of Italy party, her party is accusing the local council, which is run by the left wing Democratic Party, of not doing anything. And they even called a public meeting on Monday accusing the local council of failing to tackle the problem.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, we know that Meloni obviously has

[Katherine Carlson]

been under a lot of pressure lately, so perhaps this is a way of sort of clawing back support.

Look, you dunk on the peacocks, it's a vote winner.

[Ian Wishart]

Do peacocks have claws? Talons. Anyway, what do our listeners think? Are peacocks a menace or are they beautiful? And what else can you say about peacocks? What's up us? Anything about peacocks? Because we'd love to read it.

[Katherine Carlson]

I wish Brussels had more peacocks.

[Ian Wishart]

Do they have any peacocks?

[Katherine Carlson]

I don't remember ever seeing a peacock in Brussels.

[Ian Wishart]

Remember when we talked about what was that animal that we. The Nazi raccoons.

[Katherine Carlson]

What?

[Ian Wishart]

Yeah, we talked about that. You have to go back in your Spotify, In Spotify or your Apple app to find out when we talked about Nazi raccoons in Brussels. Anyway, Katie, yesterday we spoke about the European Order of Merit and we asked whether our listeners had anyone they'd like to nominate. Do you want to read out some of the messages we got?

[Katherine Carlson]

Definitely. So we had a message from Giacomo from Italy, hopefully not being harassed by peacocks. He's nominated Professor Manuel Desantis. His students know him as Manolo, and he apparently has inspired generations of students in Italy. Intellectual property law.

[Ian Wishart]

Oh, that's nice.

[Katherine Carlson]

And Yanush from Rome says, I would award Mario Draghi certainly not Merkle, alas, a Putin enabler.

[Ian Wishart]

Oh, that's controversial.

[Katherine Carlson]

We're allowed to say that on a podcast.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, one of our listeners can, but obviously we can't.

[Katherine Carlson]

And that is a direct quote from our listener and not POLITICO's editorial. La.

[Ian Wishart]

Shall we save ourselves by hearing a peacock again?

[Katherine Carlson]

And we'll see you tomorrow.

[Ian Wishart]

It.