“Q&A: Why we're challenging the EU's watering down of green rules”

…The European Union spent five years developing new laws requiring companies to check and remedy cases of forced labour or environmental damage caused in their global supply chains.

Now it is seeking to roll back certain measures just months after adopting them.

Amandine Van Den Berghe, a lawyer at environmental firm ClientEarth, is among a group of campaigners who lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman on April 18, accusing the EU Commission of weakening sustainability laws without public consultation or impact assessments.

The changes proposed under the package called "Omnibus" would exempt thousands of smaller European businesses from EU sustainability reporting rules and curb obligations for bigger firms to check their supply chains for human rights and environmental problems…

Context spoke to Van Den Berghe about the political backlash to green policy and how campaigners are pushing back…

What they are doing with the 'Omnibus' proposal is proper deregulation. It's really sad because it's just short-termism and not strategic at all that the EU deregulates such key legislation for its economy and for the environment…

Given the total absence of impact assessments on the environment, climate or human rights, and the total absence of public consultation, we were really concerned about the legitimacy of the new proposal…