Merz attacks by the Leyen: “It’s just too much”

Chancellor Friedrich Merz increases the pressure on his party friend and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen when it comes to reducing bureaucracy. He would urge the European Commission to take its responsibility to dismantle the bureaucracy, the CDU politician said before an informal EU summit in the Danish capital Copenhagen.

The topic of competitiveness of European industry has been the main topic in the EU for two years. This must also be expressed in regulation.

“It’s just too much. And we’ll talk about that,” said the CDU politician. The European regulatory density must be “fundamentally corrected”.

Merz had already criticized the work of the EU Commission last week, which is responsible for regulatory and deregulating proposals.

At the Federal Center Day in Cologne, he said: “You know that I am a really convinced European, but as it has been in the European Union in recent years, as this European Union has increasingly regulated – it cannot go on.”

The EU Commission machine “continues to work, ever further”, completely regardless of whether a new parliament had been chosen or not. “I want to say it a little plastic and figuratively: We now have to keep the stick in the wheels in Brussels in Brussels so that it stops,” he said.

Von der Leyen has not yet responded to the latest statements. She has headed the EU Commission since 2019. From her surroundings, it was said that the words of Merz were presumably to be explained by the domestic political pressure under which it was in Germany because of the economic situation.

The EU Commission has recently presented extensive deregulation proposals, which must now still be accepted by the Member States and the European Parliament.