Italy and Germany Ask Brussels for an 'Emergency Brake' on New EU Laws

Germany and Italy have asked for an "emergency brake" power that would allow member states to stop new EU legislation, Politico Europe reported on Monday. According to the outlet, Friedrich Merz, Giorgia Meloni and Bart de Wever said Brussels must accelerate its business simplification efforts. The request puts the two largest EU economies together behind a demand that the bloc's regulatory output be slowed.

The argument is framed as a competitiveness one. Politico Europe reports the three leaders pressing the case that European business is being weighed down by rules, and that simplification has been too slow. That is a position with an obvious constituency in Italy's manufacturing north and centre, where mid-sized firms export into EU markets and complain about compliance costs.

Abruzzo's economy sits partly in that camp. The region's pharmaceutical and manufacturing base, concentrated around L'Aquila and the coastal strip, sells into European supply chains and is exposed to the same regulatory burden the three leaders describe. Whether an emergency brake would help such firms, or instead slow the environmental and safety rules they have already absorbed, is not something the wire resolves.

There is a second Italian interest at stake, and it points the other way. Abruzzo is a recipient region under EU cohesion policy, and the bloc's regional funds have financed infrastructure, rural development and post-earthquake recovery work across the interior. The current EU budget negotiation, in which the Irish presidency has proposed a cut of around €140bn to the next multi-year framework, has already put that money in question. A mechanism that made new EU legislation easier to block would not automatically protect cohesion spending, but it would shift the balance of power over how the bloc's money and rules are set.

Politico Europe names Meloni alongside Merz and De Wever, which places the Italian government inside a northern-led push rather than in the coalition of southern states that usually argue for preserving regional transfers. That is a notable alignment, and it is the kind of thing foreign correspondents read as a signal about where Rome's priorities now sit. The wire does not report any Italian government statement on how the request would affect cohesion policy.

The mechanics of an emergency brake are not set out in the Politico Europe report. It is described as a power to stop new EU laws, requested by the three leaders, not as a proposal already on the table with agreed terms. Treating it as a settled instrument would go beyond what the source supports.

What the report does establish is timing. The request arrives while the budget negotiation is unresolved and while the UK and EU have set a summit for November 20, according to The Local Italy, at which Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Britain's current relationship with the bloc is "not good enough". Regulatory simplification and the terms of the budget are now running on parallel tracks, and Italy is a party to both.