Why Europe Can’t Kill the Cookie Banner
Europe is so back. No more cookie banners.” Not quite. Cookie banners are here to stay. They endure as an annoying but telling symbol of a deeper problem: Europe’s political class still lacks the appetite for the hard choices reform requires.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was right in this year’s State of the Union to say that “Europe is in a fight.” With the publication of the Commission’s “omnibus” reform proposals, we can now see what Brussels plans to bring to that fight.
The intentions are good. There is at least some acknowledgment that Europe’s economic malaise reflects regulatory overreach and a failure to protect the integrity of the common market.
But European policymakers remain trapped in what might be called a “luxury” mindset—the belief that all policy goals can be pursued at once, without tradeoffs or losses. Reindustrialize, but eliminate emissions. Secure energy, but reject nuclear. Compete globally, but regulate relentlessly.
As Luis Garicano, Bengt Holmström, and Nicolas Petit argue in “The Constitution of Innovation,” Europe risks repeating 20th century Argentina’s slow decline—only under harsher conditions, with Russian aggression on its borders and a worsening demographic crunch at home. Their prescription is straightforward: strengthen the EU’s common market while curbing the its regulatory ambitions. Both steps face entrenched resistance. National governments resist deeper market integration; Brussels resists self-restraint. As Alexandre de Streel of the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) recently observed, civil servants are now being asked to streamline laws they designed, defended, and built careers around.
The proposed “digital omnibus” legislation illustrates just how hard meaningful reform has become. I commented recently on the leaked draft and the Commission subsequently released the official proposal. It closely tracks the leaked version, confirming both its modest improvements and its deeper limitations.