On 24 February 2026, EU member states gave their final formal approval to the 'Omnibus I' legislative package, rubber-stamping changes to key EU Green Deal laws including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

Despite a massive rollback of human rights and environmental protections in the name of 'simplification', the CSDDD post-Omnibus still constitutes a landmark shift for corporate accountability. (Very) large companies based or operating in the EU market are required to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence across their global 'chain of activities', following a risk-based approach.

The CSDDD as enacted in summer 2024 had represented a compromise reached after a long and intense legislative process. The text gave more (while still insufficient) weight to victims' right to remedy, through a harmonised civil liability norm that enhanced clarity for all sides, and emphasised smart and focused due diligence action by companies as well as protections for SMEs. According to analysis from SOMO, less than 3,400 EU-based corporate groups fell under the original Directive's scope (a number that Omnibus I changes drastically reduced, see below).

Despite all this, Commission President von der Leyen announced Omnibus legislation in November 2024, supposed to 'simplify' the EU's CSDDD, CSRD, and Taxonomy Regulation. Caught in a false dichotomy between 'sustainability' and 'competitiveness', denounced as 'bureaucratic', and against urgent warnings including from business, approved and harmonised laws were hastily reopened.

Numerous voices from civil society, politics, academia, investors, and companies expressed deep concern that the EU's Omnibus process and narrow competitiveness agenda, exacerbated by pressures from the US, would risk undermining the EU's long-standing leadership on smart sustainability regulation when it is most needed.

The Omnibus process also disrupted discussion on the CSDDD's practical implementation, as well as transposition of the original directive into member states' national laws.

The Commission published its Omnibus I draft package on 26 February 2025, including plans to delete harmonised civil liability and focus companies' due diligence on their direct (tier 1) suppliers – some said a "bitter irony", considering that this approach, pushed for by certain lobbies in the German Supply Chain Act already, came with an increased riks of tick-box compliance and 'bureaucratic' company interpretation and practice rather than reducing it.

The Council's position on the Omnibus proposal, released im June 2025, suggested further dramatic reductions in scope and effectiveness.

In the European Parliament (EP), the leading (legal affairs/JURI) committe voted on its position on 13 October 2025, but the Parliament's plenary, on 22 October 2025, refused to directly send it to trilogue negotiations with Council and Commission. The position adopted in JURI by representatives of the pro-European parties was a compromise forced via centre-right (European People's Party/EPP) threats to otherwise side with the far right.

On 13 November 2025, the European Parliament adopted its final trilogue mandate, with 382 MEPs in favour, 249 against, and 13 abstaining – and EPP voting together with the far right in an unprecedented move. One remaining positive aspect in the Parliament's position after this seismic vote was its reintroduction of a risk-based approach to due diligence across the full 'chain of activities' instead of a tier-1 focus.

Triologue negotiations between EU Parliament, Commission and Council started on 18 November 2025, based on the Parliament and Council's amendments to the Commission's Omnibus I proposal ('4 column table'), and concluded in the night from 8 to 9 December 2025. Like Council and EP positions, the political agreement between co-legislators dramatically reduced the CSDDD’s scope by 70% to companies with over 5,000 employees and €1.5b turnover. It deleted mandatory climate transition plans, in line with the EP's final negotiation mandate voted through with far-right backing, as well as the EU-wide harmonised civil liability norm. The CSRD's scope was also drastically reduced by 90% to companies with over 1,000 employees and €450m turnover (while the EP's position had even gone further). The deal largely retained the CSDDD's risk-based approach over the full supply chain and included clauses for a review (by 2031) of the possible extension of the CSDDD and CSRD's scope and possible introduction of harmonised civil liability (see Frank Bold's comparison table below).

The trilogue agreement (legal text here), after it was approved by member state ambassadors in COREPER II on 10 December and the EP's JURI committee on 11 December, was adopted in the EP's plenary on 16 December, again with backing from the far right.

Civil society has sharply criticised the 'gutting' of CSDDD and CSRD as well as the process and pressures that led to it – while noting that the remaining framework retains the core due diligence duty and sets ground rules for corporate accountability to build on, e.g. in member states' transposition into national law.

As part of the Omnibus I package, a so-called 'Stop-the-clock' law had already postponed the deadline for national CSDDD transposition by one year to 26 July 2027, which the final Omnibus agreement extended by another year to 26 July 2028.

A first set of practical CSDDD implementation guidance to be developed by the Commission in consultation with stakeholders is now scheduled for publication in July 2027.

We are documenting news and reactions in our story timeline below, covering developments since the CSDDD's enactment in July 2024.

For details on the CSDDD's journey in the beginning of 2024 ahead of its formal entry into force, please refer to this earlier story and timeline. For the run-up to the initial CSDDD trilogue agreement between EU co-legislators of 14 December 2023, please refer to this compilation.