Regulatory Crosswinds: Transatlantic Perspectives on Administrative Reform

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On June 9, 2026, the GW Regulatory Studies Center co-hosted a webinar with the Frankfurt Competence Center for German and Global Regulation titled “Regulatory Crosswinds: Can the US and EU Stay Aligned Amid Administrative Upheaval?” The first half of the event featured presentations from Susan Dudley, Director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center; Patrick McLaughlin, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution; and Roland Koch, Director of the Frankfurt Competence Center for German and Global Regulation. Their remarks centered on contrasting approaches to regulatory reform across the Atlantic and how each system is adapting to rapid administrative and technological change. The second half of the webinar, summarized in a companion commentary, featured experts in AI and data governance. William Yeatman, Deputy Director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center, then moderated a discussion amongst panelists and the international online audience.

The U.S. Deregulatory Push

The discussion began with Dudley outlining the shifting balance of power in Washington, D.C. She highlighted how recent Supreme Court decisions, including the major questions doctrine and Loper Bright, may shift interpretive authority away from federal agencies and back toward the courts and Congress, reversing a decades-long trend toward broad agency discretion and “presidential administration.” Exerting pressure in the opposite direction, the Trump administration is aggressively advancing its deregulatory agenda through the (now defunct) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a “10-for-1” regulatory budget, and expedited deregulatory procedures. Dudley warned, however, that while these measures seek to reduce regulatory burdens, relying heavily on executive action may leave reforms vulnerable to reversal by future administrations. She also cautioned that fast-track procedures may reduce opportunities for rigorous analysis, public notice and comment. To better navigate emerging technologies, Dudley argued that traditional regulatory practices, such as regulatory analysis, oversight, and public engagement, remain important but are not sufficient on their own. Regulators also need more adaptive approaches that allow for competition, flexible regulatory design, continuous learning, and ex-post evaluation.

Measuring Regulatory Change

McLaughlin followed with a presentation on the empirical measurement of regulatory change. He argued that regulatory change cannot be measured by a single headline number. Instead, analysts need a “dashboard” of indicators that captures rulemaking activity, existing regulatory text, costs, guidance, and enforcement. McLaughlin presented findings from his RegData project, which tracks the text of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). He noted that the CFR has seen a rare reduction of roughly 611,000 words and about 9,751 regulatory restrictions, such as “shall,” “must,” and “may not,” since January 2025. He described this decline as notable because regulatory restrictions typically increase during modern presidencies, while his analysis showed a reduction of nearly 1 percent. He also introduced an AI-assisted “rule-text audit” that uses large language models to classify Federal Register final-rule actions. The audit found that about 20 percent of the reviewed final rules were deregulatory. Among the rules with available dollar estimates, it identified nearly $700 million in annual savings in addition to the savings already included in the administration’s own estimate.

Germany’s Administrative Reform Agenda

Providing the European perspective, Koch discussed the structural challenges facing the German administrative state. He explained that Germany’s regulatory system is slower and more procedurally constrained than the U.S. system because of rule-bound legalism, federal fragmentation, and strict data separation. German government action must be grounded in law and subject to administrative court review, while authority is divided across the federal government, states, and municipalities. Public-sector data have also traditionally been stored in separate registers with limited interoperability, often requiring citizens and businesses to submit the same information multiple times to different authorities. Koch argued that regulatory burdens have accumulated over decades in areas such as telecommunications, environmental policy, sustainability reporting, and data protection, increasing pressure on both businesses and public administration. In response to these pressures, Koch explained that reform is framed differently in Brussels and in Germany. In Brussels, policymakers tend to describe these efforts as “simplification” rather than deregulation. At the national level, Germany is pursuing a more modest form of deregulation, including a “2-for-1” approach rather than the U.S. “10-for-1” model. Koch also highlighted the new Federal Ministry for Digitalization and State Modernization as part of an effort to consolidate digital responsibilities, coordinate reform efforts, and improve interoperability across government registers and IT systems.

Balancing Simplification and Analysis

During the Q&A session, the speakers explored tension between regulatory simplification and rigorous analysis. Dudley noted that simplification and analysis do not have to conflict, but warned that policymakers should not skip the analytical step altogether. McLaughlin agreed that procedural simplification does not have to come at the expense of analytical discipline, citing Virginia as an example where streamlining the review process expanded the breadth of economic analysis applied to state rules. Koch emphasized that regulators should also consider the cumulative burden of regulation. Even if individual rules appear justified on their own, he argued, the overall density of regulation can affect economic growth and place broader burdens on society that may be overlooked when analysis focuses only on single rules.

Taken together, the first half of the webinar showed that the United States and Germany are both trying to reduce regulatory burdens, but through different institutional approaches. The U.S. approach is faster and more executive-driven, while the German approach is more gradual and legally constrained. Both approaches involve tradeoffs. The U.S. model may move quickly but raises questions about durability and process, while the German model preserves procedural safeguards but may struggle with speed and administrative complexity.

Hyejin (Jin) Kim is a graduate research assistant in the GW Regulatory Studies Center