1. 📈EU REGULATION BACKFIRES, EMISSIONS RISE

For all of Brussels’ climate ambition, the EU actually saw its greenhouse gas emissions rise in 2025. The bloc released 3.34 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, an increase from 2024, according to preliminary Eurostat data. After years of aggressive Green Deal policymaking, the EU’s emissions-cutting momentum has visibly stalled.

The EU has set a legally binding target to cut emissions 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, but as of 2024, it has come up short on that goal, leaving a significant gap with just a few years to go.

Transport emissions remain essentially stagnant, and heating emissions actually rose in 2025. These sectors that touch everyday life, including how people get around and heat their homes, are not improving. The European Commission is now floating a bloc-wide electrification target to address the gap, which is effectively an admission that years of overregulation haven’t done the job.

The EU has staked enormous political capital and imposed massive costs on businesses on its radical climate agenda. The 2025 numbers are an uncomfortable reminder that their far-left climate policies do not work. And while Europe grapples with its own failures, Brussels is actively pushing to export these egregious regulations, the CSRD, CSDDD, and the rest of the EU’s sprawling ESG rulebook, onto American companies. Why should we allow U.S. businesses to comply with legislative burdens designed by regulators who can’t even come close to hitting their own targets?

2. 🔇BRUSSELS IS USING “TRANSPARENCY” RULES AS A POLITICAL WEAPON

The EU’s Transparency Register just suspended MCC Brussels, one of the most prominent conservative think tanks in Europe.

The suspension limits MCC’s access to EU institutions, including meetings with Commission officials and European Parliament accreditation. MCC Brussels is appealing the decision, arguing plainly that bureaucrats are using an administrative technicality to silence a dissenting voice.

The technical pretext is a rule against organizations registering multiple times across different national branches. But MCC Brussels spent over a year cooperating fully with the investigation, answered every request made of them, and was suspended anyway.

Executive Director Frank Furedi says this fits a four-year pattern of targeting, including Brussels mayors attempting to shut down the National Conservatism Conference in 2024, a ban later thrown out by Belgian courts. A system designed to “guarantee openness” is being turned into a tool for ideological gatekeeping, and the EU isn’t trying very hard to hide it.

🥊 HOW EU IS SABOTAGING ITS OWN TRADE DEAL

Last month, President Trump set a bold goal to complete a trade framework with the EU by July 4. Recent actions from Brussels, however, threaten to thwart the potential agreement ahead of America’s 250th birthday.

The EU’s regulatory framework which has bled US companies dry for years is poised to further inflame the transatlantic relationship with a fine against Google for hundreds of millions that is expected to be announced in the coming days, and a recently-publicized DMA probe into Apple’s cloud services.

American firms aren’t the only ones bearing the costs of Brussels’ predatory agenda though. Europeans have begun to feel the impact of the DMA too through increased prices, heightened security vulnerabilities, and missing out on new features like Siri AI.

President Trump has not stopped fighting against what he’s aptly characterized as “overseas extortion,” and as the trade negotiations continue, no one is more prepared to ensure concessions are extracted from the EU on this issue during talks.

If, however, the EU and the US fail to reach an agreement next month to succeed the 2025 Turnberry Truce, Europe will only have itself to blame for undermining any chance at a deal with a regulatory crusade it simply refuses to abandon.