I had my egr valve with restrictor plates on and didn’t make much difference, so last weekend I set to and put a blanking plate, which I made myself on the exhaust manifold, removed the egr cooler and bent some 15mm copper pipe to go in its place. On the egr valve I put another blanking plate on there until I can afford to get it mapped out. What a difference my 1.9 cdti 150 bhp was flying, then I put a pipercross race air filter in and whoosh she was away again, it no longer feels like I am constantly driving into a head wind, the engine sounds happy and has instant power no lag, and no smoke at all on startup, now and again she still puffs out some blue smoke which it has always done but I think it must be the dpf needs a clean. My car now is like a rocket ship, she is an 08 model Vectra c. 

Well as long as the engine is being driven hard enough (which diesels much prefer) then the EGR delete should be fine.
Most of the issues are when the car is being driven on local short trips and not enough to burn off soot and carbon deposits