Today's environmental omnibus is a good example of what is at the core of the Commission's simplification agenda.
Simplification will help us to achieve our goals, rather than hinder them.
It will remove obstacles.
In fact, simplification is about making sure we deliver.
This includes our environmental objectives.
We are not in the business of undermining the EU's high standards and our broad objectives remain unchanged.
Rather, we are responding to the needs of our people and businesses to be clever in how we maintain those high standards and achieve our objectives.
Allow me to highlight some key elements of today's package, in line with this guiding principle.
Firstly, on speeding up environmental assessments.
The Draghi report pointed to permitting procedures as major obstacles to the deployment of crucial infrastructure projects to deliver the green transition.
Today's proposal provides for a simplified and coherent umbrella for faster and better-quality environmental assessments.
Secondly, we are proposing significant simplification concerning environmental management systems, or EMS, under the Industrial Emissions Directive.
Businesses will no longer be required to prepare an EMS for each installation, providing instead for company level systems within the same Member State.
Furthermore, Member States will be able to report more information on behalf of individual farmers.
This will help further alleviate their reporting burdens.
Finally, we are also reducing administrative burdens under waste legislation, scrapping the ineffective SCIP (Substance of Concern in Products) database.
Instead, when designing the digital product passport for products, the Commission will include data about substances of very high concern.
The net cost impact of today's Environmental Omnibus package is significant.
It will reduce annual administrative burdens by a further €1 billion per year.
It brings the annual administrative savings stemming from the omnibus proposals and other simplification initiatives the Commission has already presented to €11 billion.
Let me put this in the ontext of our overall simplification agenda.
We have set out ambitious targets for all administrative costs: reducing them by 25% for all companies and by 35% for SMEs.
This translates to €37.5 billion in annual administrative cost savings by the end of this Commission's mandate in 2029.
Clearly, we are making good progress.
But we need to continue at least at the same pace to deliver on this objective.
We have a mandate for a whole of Commission effort that will continue throughout the Commission's term of office, with each Member of the College tasked with delivering far-reaching simplification in their area of competence.
I would like to stress that today's package is an important first step in our efforts to simplify the body of EU environmental rules.
But it is only a first step.
The Commission has a strategy in place to gradually stress-test the entire body of EU law during the current mandate.
This testing will identify opportunities to codify or consolidate legislation, remove duplications, address inconsistencies, and further simplify EU rules.
I will conclude by reiterating that engagement is at the heart of our strategy.
As with all of our Omnibus packages, future simplification initiatives will be designed in close consultation with stakeholders, civil society, public authorities and businesses.
I believe that there's plenty of common ground to build on.
With understanding and goodwill on all sides, we can continue to strike an appropriate balance and achieve our common objectives.
