The EU's deregulation fever is coming for your flight compensation

Negotiators are in all-day crunch talks today as the European Parliament pushes back against national governments trying to weaken passenger rights for delayed or cancelled flights.

For over a year now, deregulation fever has gripped the EU capital. It goes by many names: simplification, omnibus, competitiveness, fitness check. The virus is coming from national capitals, where struggling leaders such as Germany’s Friedrich Merz are desperately pulling on an age-old lever to deflect blame for their own shortcomings: blame the Brussels bureacracy boogeyman. Together, Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have come up with a plan to claw back EU powers to national capitals - the exact opposite of what was recommended by the Draghi Report. That report, now being wilfully misinterpreted by national leaders to be a criticism of EU red tape, in fact said that what’s holding back Europe’s economy is the failure to complete the unification of the EU single market.

It is in that spirit that national governments have come for the 2005 EU Passenger Rights Regulation with their knives out. Currently, passengers on a flight operated by an EU airline (plus non-EU airlines departing from an EU airport) that are delayed more than three hours are entitled to €250 for short-haul flights, €400 for flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres, and €600 for long-haul flights.