Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Brussels and Berlin are increasing regulatory pressure on European industry. With the tightening of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, agriculture is now moving even further into the crosshairs of climate regulation. That the EU is increasingly isolating itself on the international stage seems to concern no one.
If this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos delivered one clear message, it was this: the U.S. delegation led by President Donald Trump gave Europe’s climate-socialist economic transformation a red card. In stark terms, the U.S. President made it clear that the European path—the regulatory attempt at a net-zero economy with zero CO₂ emissions—has already failed in American eyes, and they have hit the brakes.
Now that the German cabinet is transposing the EU-mandated tightening of the Industrial Emissions Directive into national law, extending it to agricultural operations after parliamentary approval (Apollo News reported), the impression solidifies: the politically induced crisis of European industry—the slow deindustrialization of Europe’s key industrial hubs—is still treated in the political leadership’s economic models as a minor issue, a collateral damage on the road to the green utopia.
Artificial state demand is now being used to try to refill freed industrial capacities—whether through military production or subsidized eco-projects, which fail under cost pressures or simply go unrequested.
Regulatory Pressure by Design
Specifically, the new EU directive will place roughly 30 percent of poultry and pig farms under industrial emissions regulation. As if the sector were not already on the brink of collapse under existing regulatory pressure, the next attack on these operations is now being orchestrated.
Across the EU, about 50,000 operations will be required to implement binding environmental management systems, audited on cycles of one to three years. In Germany alone, 13,000 facilities are subject to EU compliance. Farms with at least 1,200 fattening pigs or 700 breeding sows, as well as poultry operations with around 40,000 broilers or 21,400 laying hens, will now be direct targets of the tightened rules.
Under the threat of heavy fines of at least three percent of EU-generated annual revenue for violations, the European Union is attempting to enforce the Green Deal by brute force. The goal is to ensure the reduction of harmful emissions in air, water, and soil, while promoting resource efficiency and a decarbonized circular economy by 2050.
For German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD), the directive’s tightening is a cause for celebration. He cited the policy’s successes over the past decade, which have already led to significant CO₂ reductions and fostered greener production in Europe. That technological progress primarily arises from competition and market-driven dynamics hardly factors into today’s political central planning.
High ideological fortresses have been erected, completely obscuring the view of economic reality.
For affected farms, the implementation means one thing above all: a massive increase in documentation, approval, and compliance obligations. They will now be subject to regular emission measurements and detailed reporting, which will be submitted to state environmental authorities and fed into EU-wide registers and public portals—suddenly, transparency matters. This transparency requirement creates intense public pressure on farms to comply swiftly and fully, regardless of how the additional costs will be financed.
Industry experts estimate compliance costs—for example, ammonia emission reductions—between €100,000 and €500,000 per barn, depending on size and technology. If BAT requirements (“Best Available Techniques”) must be retrofitted annually, these burdens can quickly escalate into millions.
Previously, the EU directive applied mainly to sectors such as chemicals, steel, cement, refineries, and energy facilities, targeting primarily large installations with high emissions and throughput. Government officials repeatedly stress that the tightened regulatory pressure applies only to large operations. In reality, both the Supply Chain Act and the new directive create significant pressure along entire supply chains. Large companies are forced to pass their environmental obligations onto smaller suppliers, extending inspection and compliance mechanisms across the entire value chain.
Political Paralysis
Remarkably, European politics remains unfazed by the ongoing deindustrialization of its economic base, stubbornly defending its course. As the industrial foundation erodes, so too does the EU’s geopolitical influence. Every industrial operation that succumbs to regulatory pressure and rising energy costs and relocates takes valuable know-how with it. Value chains destabilize, high factor incomes vanish, and the state faces growing fiscal pressure.
The response to this visible disaster—which led to around 24,000 corporate insolvencies last year—remains predictable: a transparent media performance delivered by government representatives. The Chancellor’s well-meaning calls for bureaucracy reduction are repeated with increasing emphasis, not least in view of five upcoming state elections this year. Bureaucracy reduction has become a standard political phrase with no real consequences.
The underlying strategy becomes clear: publicly, the government positions itself as problem-solver, buying time while steadfastly pursuing the set goal of green transformation.
German policymakers could easily reverse this destructive course. Germany is the EU’s largest net contributor, and key levers of power are held by Christian Democrats in Berlin, Brussels, and the European Parliament.
The only way out of this self-imposed trap would be a return to a fully deregulated free market economy—combined with a political rapprochement with Russian energy flows. Yet the spirit of central planning and presumed industrial control continues to dominate.
Ever-Increasing Bureaucracy
Growing regulation inevitably demands an expanding administrative apparatus. Over the past five years, public sector employment has risen by about two percent annually—roughly 100,000 additional positions. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor’s repeated calls for bureaucracy reduction appear a media tactic farce.
Documentation, proof, and auditing obligations in German industry have taken on Kafkaesque dimensions. In the past three years alone, some 325,000 additional positions had to be created in companies to handle the growing administrative burden flowing from Brussels and Berlin. In effect, the state is outsourcing its own bureaucracy to the private sector.
These political decisions exert tangible pressure on companies. Berlin and Brussels are responding to international competition and U.S. deregulation with policies that intensify existing industrial challenges rather than solving them.
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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
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