“Why EU omnibus should rebalance the costs of sustainability”

Europe is once again grappling with a dilemma that cuts to the heart of its identity and future direction. In the debate surrounding the European Commission’s “simplification omnibus“, a critical conflation has emerged – one that risks undermining both environmental progress and economic clarity.

Two fundamentally distinct costs are being blurred: the costs of regulatory complexity and the costs of becoming genuinely sustainable. While the former warrants serious attention, conveniently pairing it with the latter has created a smokescreen behind which corporate accountability for environmental harm is quietly disappearing...

…Under the guise of simplification, key pillars of the EU’s sustainability agenda – such as the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD) – are being diluted or postponed. These changes do not merely lighten paperwork, they shift the balance of responsibility and allow unsustainable practices to continue, unseen and unaccountable…

…weakening sustainability reporting or abandoning due diligence requirements is not simplification, it is regression. It amounts to the socialisation of sustainability risks. When companies are no longer required to bear the costs of the harm they cause, those costs do not disappear…

…sustainability is not a luxury but a strategic imperative, and regulation is not the enemy of competitiveness but one of its enablers…