By Daniel Stanley, Executive Director of Future Narratives Lab
Many spectres are haunting Europe at this moment, but among the most persistent is looming deregulation: a widespread, deliberate removal of rules and protections across various domains. Its legislative form is the ‘Omnibus’, but the overall agenda relies on a set of powerful rhetorical appeals and justifications, portraying it as a common sense response to well-understood truths.
Civil society and political groups across the continent are resisting such efforts, pointing out the many contradictions and inaccuracies in these arguments. But as we see increasingly across the world, appeals do not need to be logically robust or consistent with the evidence in order to be sufficiently appealing to achieve their goals. And if they can capture the hearts and minds of decision-making elites, then public opinion risks being rendered at least partly irrelevant.
To truly counter these narratives, we need a deeper understanding of their constituent elements, how they work together, and how they appeal to our collective shared experiences, hopes and fears. Working with others in civil society to carry out this kind of analysis, and using it to build cultural and political power, is our core mission at Future Narratives Lab.
In December 2025 we made a start on this work, holding a session on ‘Countering the Power of Deregulation Narratives’ in Brussels at the Finance for Society Forum, to begin exploring and developing this area. In this post, we’ll outline the initial analysis presented at that workshop, how it has developed since, and details of an upcoming online workshop where we’ll be taking this agenda forward.
What makes deregulation narratives appealing?
While often cloaked in technical terminology or industry-produced evidence, attempts to promote deregulation at their core often rely on a small number of basic arguments and framings. Among the most common are the following triad:
- Simplification: portraying regulation as an unnecessary burden, whose onerous complexity must obviously be reduced
- Competitiveness: depicting deregulation as the urgent, pragmatic response to ensure that Europe isn’t ‘left behind’ in an increasingly fierce global economic ‘race’
- Innovation: promising that removal of regulation will unblock a wave of invention of creativity and entrepreneurship across the content, bringing prosperity to all.
Each of these framings has its own characteristics, and speaks to particular values and experiences of the world, which are worthy of further analysis, and were explored in our discussions in Brussels. There are two particular dimensions to their appeal and relationship, though, which we will focus on here.
- A circular logic
These three appeals do not just work independently: they act together to construct an overall narrative whose circular, self-reinforcing logic is part of what makes it effective. As depicted in the diagram below, each of the components can act as a starting point for a sequence that justifies itself. Thus the geopolitical ‘race’ is given as the external driver making ‘simplification’ necessary, in order to allow the ‘innovation’ that can make European economies ‘competitive’.
It is this circularity that in part makes the deregulation narrative – and the agenda it sustains – so resilient. It provides a reassuring solidity and completeness, giving it the feel of basic common sense, even in the face of growing public resistance, and evidence of its negative results.
At the same time, the overall narrative promises (or at least implies) a better future, in which a simpler, more competitive and innovative Europe once more has the economic growth that is supposed to solve every other problem – while simultaneously threatening that the only other possible outcome is burdensome complexity leaving European business unable to innovate and compete, and thus losing the global race. The stakes are made clear.
Together, the completeness and the implied stakes create a binary scenario – you are either with this agenda, or you are against it. Those are the only options.
2. Resonating with real common experiences
Though much of the debate about deregulation may play out in elite policy circles, and be conducted in its detail using terminology that would mean little to most people, the ‘common sense’ nature of the narrative described above is not only due to their circular relationship. A key reason each of the component framings of the narrative appeal, is that they speak to broadly held values, and in particular, to widely understood experiences and assumptions about how the world works.
For example, on a basic level, who among us could argue that we don’t live in an increasingly complex and confusing world, difficult to navigate? The reality of far too many of our lives is of a morass of complicated systems, processes and terms and conditions, especially if you lack the resources to buy expert advice, support, or avoidance. In this context, ‘simplification’ has very straightforward and understandable surface appeal.
In contrast, the one area in which we all will have experienced undoubted advances in recent decades – however questionable their side effects might be – is the domain of commercial digital technology. Thus the idea that ‘innovation’ (by implication of technology startups) as the most likely source of economic growth, has similar intuitive appeal.
Finally, that we live in an increasingly dangerous and ‘competitive’ world, with more actors adopting a ‘zero-sum’ approach, including to economics and trade, is surely an analysis that few would dispute, making the appeals to strength, power and the necessity of supposed pragmatism and sacrifices in adapting to such a context easier than ever.
Why pro-regulation narratives fail
What are the implications of this analysis? There are many to explore, which we hope to do alongside expanding and improving upon it with the civil society organisations facing the impacts of this agenda across Europe. In the meantime, there are two immediate conclusions that can be drawn, that can help explain the possible limitations of some of the most common ways that it has been responded to thus far.
In the first place, arguments that stress the positive side of regulations, positioning them as beneficial protections, risk being dismissed as an idealistic luxury, not realistic for the dangerous competitive world of today. This is particularly the case where arguments can be presented as coming from ‘naïve’ liberals or progressives, not willing to ‘face reality’.
On the flip side, attacks on deregulation that portray it as ruthless ‘slashing’, can risk reinforcing the idea of deregulators as ‘tough’, hard-headed pragmatists, willing to make the difficult but necessary decisions.
All this is not to say of course that all pro-regulation or anti-deregulation arguments that approach this territory are counter-productive – evidently this is not the case. But it does suggest there are serious risks to be aware of.
How to push back
So what should we do about this? Well firstly, it should be stressed that this is an initial analysis, developed for and improved through a short workshop session, and can undoubtedly be improved significantly through feedback and collaboration. There are many organisations across Europe doing important and impressive work to push back against the deregulatory agenda in a range of domains, and the immediate test will be if this analysis and its following steps can be helpful to these efforts in any way.
Alongside supporting these short term battles – a matter of definite urgency – there is of course also a longer term narrative ‘war’ that needs to be fought. Undoubtedly the reason that deregulatory narratives and framings have had success is not only the characteristics we describe, but that they are well established tropes, pillars of an economic orthodoxy for decades, and boosted rather than challenged by recent events. Pushing back against deeply embedded assumptions such as these will be a long term process.
Creating a counter narrative
Some possible starting points do present themselves, such as the calls for ‘digital sovereignty’, and the growing backlash against harms caused by the ‘innovation’ of online platforms, or a focus on democratic accountability. But each has their own potential pitfalls and drawbacks, and are far from yet being clearly connected together and understood as part of a coherent, linked narrative framework.
Creating such a framework and mobilising it in practice is not something that will happen overnight – working towards it must be an urgent priority alongside short-term battles, if we are to build a resilient alternative proposition for the long term. Informed by what we are up against, we have some idea of its necessary characteristics: it must be internally coherent, speak directly to commonly held experiences and values, and work across a range of diverse contexts. We know also what it will take to create it – we need to work together across sectors, and within them, to develop and try out different approaches, learn and build.
As a next small step towards this, on Wednesday 18th March, at 4pm CET we are holding a webinar for European Civil Society organisations in collaboration with The Good Lobby, where we will explore this more, get feedback, and put forward possible strategies. We hope to see you there.
Countering the Narratives of Europe’s Deregulation Wave – Webinar with The Good Lobby – Wednesday 18th March 4PM CET – Registration
Daniel Stanley is the Executive Director of Future Narratives Lab, a non-profit research and strategy initiative dedicated to building the independent cultural and political power of civil society. His recent work focuses on the role of narrative in systems change, and he has written widely on values, ideology, and cultural strategy across civil society and philanthropy.