Suspending the packaging regulation: what Brussels can change and what it cannot

On 30 September 2026 the federal board of the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion of the CDU and CSU, MIT for short, adopted a resolution on the EU packaging regulation. The MIT calls on the federal government to press in Brussels “without delay” for the application of the regulation to be suspended. Less packaging waste and more circular economy it calls the right aims. But the rules, it says, burden small and medium-sized businesses above all with bureaucracy and harm the internal market.^[1]

The resolution contains nine demands. The first: obligations that are not yet sufficiently specified should be temporarily suspended and their deadlines set anew. Added to this are, among others: no fines or other sanctions as long as obligations are legally unclear; a binding practical test for small and medium-sized businesses; de minimis thresholds; a single European registration instead of 27 national procedures; and abolition of the duty to name an authorised representative in other EU countries. The MIT’s formula is: “Suspend, improve, simplify – and only then apply with legal certainty.”^[1]

How realistic is that? Is the picture of hundreds of new EU regulations a month accurate? And would a smaller EU administration bring fewer rules? This background piece sets it out.

What has applied since 12 August

The packaging regulation, officially Regulation (EU) 2025/40, has applied directly in all member states since 12 August 2026. It needs no national implementing act for that.^[7][8] Producers must enter themselves in the producer register in every member state in which they first make packaging available. Anyone supplying packaging or packaged goods directly to end users in another EU country without having an establishment there must name an authorised representative there.^[7] The MIT writes that a business without an establishment must “as a matter of principle” name an authorised representative. On the wording of the regulation the duty applies only where supply is made directly to end users, for instance when shipping to private customers.^[1][7]

Part of the rules is still missing. By 12 February 2026 the Commission was to lay down the format in which producers register and report. It published a draft on 6 August 2026, but the legal act has not been adopted.^[9] The harmonised labels for packaging and collection containers were due by 12 August 2026. The Commission entered the project only on 14 September 2026 and has not yet published a draft.^[10] The labelling obligation itself applies from 12 August 2028 or 24 months after the implementing acts enter into force, whichever is later.^[7]

The sanctions for breaches are laid down by the member states, by 12 February 2027 at the latest.^[7] The Commission has called on the member states to enforce the authorised representative obligation pragmatically and to refrain from sanctions.^[11] That call is not legally binding.^[8]

Can the regulation still be suspended?

No government can suspend an EU regulation on its own. That is possible only with a new EU legal act. The proposal for it comes from the Commission. The European Parliament decides by majority, the Council by qualified majority: at least 55 per cent of the member states representing together at least 65 per cent of the population.^[8]

Two cases show that this can be quick. The EU postponed the new sustainability reporting obligations in 2025 in seven weeks: proposal on 26 February, publication on 16 April.^[12][13] The deforestation regulation was postponed twice, most recently with a proposal of 21 October 2025 and a regulation of 19 December 2025.^[14][15] In both cases Commission, Parliament and Council were in agreement.

On the packaging regulation that agreement is missing. There is no proposal to suspend or postpone the whole regulation.^[3][16] In December 2025 the Commission proposed only to suspend the authorised representative obligation for producers established in the EU until 1 January 2035. Further amendments to the regulation are expressly not part of the proposal’s purpose.^[16]

On 5 October 2026 the European Parliament’s environment committee adopted its report on this proposal by 74 votes to 0 with 4 abstentions. It frames the suspension more narrowly. It is to apply only to micro and small enterprises established in the EU, that is to businesses with fewer than 50 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of up to 10 million euros.^[2][17] It ends on 1 January 2035 or earlier, as soon as a new EU law with general rules on producer responsibility and authorised representatives applies. Registration, reporting and contributions remain obligatory.^[17]

On 20 October 2026 the plenary of the Parliament took over all the committee’s amendments. It adopted the proposal as amended by 616 votes to 9 with 39 abstentions.^[39][40] Amendments from individual political groups failed to find a majority.^[39] The amendments taken over include a safeguard clause: anyone who merely splits or restructures their business in order to fall under the suspension cannot use it.^[40] This is not yet a law. The plenary referred the file back to the committee so that it can negotiate with the Council.^[39][41]

In the Council the position is more open. In April 2026 the presidency broke off the negotiations because a large majority of member states had reservations.^[18] Since 30 September the member states have again been examining a targeted solution for small producers, without reopening the regulation itself.^[19][20] According to the Parliament there was still no common position of the Council on 20 October either.^[41] In a note for the Environment Council on 12 October, Austria, supported by the Czech Republic and Estonia, demanded that the authorised representative obligation be suspended for small quantities and that the legal act on the register format not be adopted for the time being.^[21]

The federal government is not calling for the whole regulation to be suspended. In Brussels it has proposed exempting traders with less than 10 tonnes of packaging a year from the authorised representative obligation and suspending registration in the new system until mid-2028, until a central European register is running.^[22] Writing for the federal government in September, parliamentary state secretary Bettina Hagedorn said the authorised representative rule “in this form contradicts the principles of the EU internal market”.^[23]

The business associations go further. The DIHK calls for application or enforcement to be suspended as long as central requirements are unclear, and proposes a de minimis threshold of 500 kilograms of packaging per country per year.^[24] The retail association HDE demands a grace period without fines until 1 January 2028.^[25] Environmental organisations take the opposite view: in May, Deutsche Umwelthilfe and NABU co-signed an open letter demanding that the date of application be kept and the regulation not be reopened.^[26]

The authorised representative rule “in this form contradicts the principles of the EU internal market”. Federal government, answer in the Bundestag of 9 September 2026

Hundreds of regulations a month?

According to EUR-Lex statistics the EU adopted 1,150 regulations in 2025, amending regulations included. That is just under 100 a month. Counting directives, decisions and other legal acts as well, it comes to 2,567 a year, that is a good 200 a month.^[4]

Of these only 40 come from Parliament and Council as legislators, a good three a month.^[4] In the 2019 to 2024 parliamentary term it was around five a month.^[5] The largest part are implementing and delegated regulations of the Commission: authorisations, customs tariffs, technical detail.^[4][5] The Commission may adopt them only where a law from Parliament and Council empowers it to do so. For implementing acts, representatives of the member states vote in committees.^[8][27] The volume of follow-up rules is therefore already laid down in the law itself.

The former ECB president Mario Draghi counted around 13,000 EU legal acts from 2019 to 2024 in his report for the Commission. A good half of them were delegated and implementing acts.^[28] For businesses what counts in the end is the effort. According to the 2026 annual report of the national regulatory control council, over 50 per cent of the burden that rules place on business goes back to European rules.^[6]

Would a smaller EU administration help?

The editorial team found no study or official audit showing that fewer staff in Brussels lead to fewer rules. Nor any evidence of the opposite.

The figures that do exist argue against a simple connection. In 2026 the Commission had 18,797 established posts, fewer than in 2009 with 20,384.^[29] The number of legal acts has not fallen over that period; according to the Draghi report it was higher from 2019 to 2024 than from 2014 to 2019.^[28] In 2024 the European Court of Auditors found that the established posts of Parliament, Council, Commission and Court of Justice fell by 3.7 per cent from 2013 to 2023 while their tasks grew. The institutions compensated for this with, among other things, temporary staff and unpaid overtime.^[30]

The Commission is betting on fewer obligations rather than fewer staff. It intends to cut companies’ recurring administrative costs by 25 per cent by 2029, and by 35 per cent for small and medium-sized enterprises.^[31] Since February 2025 it has put forward twelve collective proposals for this, known as omnibus packages, and estimates the relief at 14 billion euros a year.^[32] There is no independent examination of that figure. The regulatory control council criticises the fact that the packages were in part produced without consultation and without an assessment of their consequences.^[6]

Staffing is currently being negotiated. For the 2028 to 2034 financial framework the Commission wants 2,500 additional posts.^[33] On 10 October 2026 the Irish Council presidency proposed keeping the staff of all institutions at today’s level. For administration there would then be 95.3 rather than 104.4 billion euros available, at 2025 prices.^[34][35] At a meeting of heads of government on the EU budget in Berlin on 27 August, Austria’s chancellor Christian Stocker said: “more Europe does not come about through more money or more officials either, but through better decisions.”^[36]

In a draft of April 2026 the CDU/CSU parliamentary group proposed considering staff reductions in the EU institutions, together with an upper limit on legal acts per field and a “one in, two out” rule. Whether the group’s board adopted it in that form is not confirmed.^[37]

What is open

On 20 October the European Parliament settled its position on relief for small businesses. Now it has to reach agreement with the Council. The negotiations can only begin once the Council too has its position.^[19][41] The Commission intends to put forward a circular economy act that is to govern producer responsibility for all products; this was planned for the third quarter of 2026.^[38] The legal act on the register format and the harmonised labels are still outstanding.^[9][10] By 12 February 2027 the member states must lay down their sanctions.^[7]

A suspension of the whole regulation, as the MIT demands, has so far been proposed by neither the Commission nor the federal government.

More on the regulation in the publisher’s open letter to the federal chancellor. More on the EU’s budget, administration and legal acts in the analysis of the EU budget.