"The big EU deregulation. Disastrous Omnibus proposal erodes EU’s corporate accountability commitments and slashes human rights and environmental protections", 10 March 2025

The publication by the European Commission of its Omnibus proposal revising key corporate sustainability laws sends a clear political signal: President Ursula von der Leyen is deprioritising human rights, workers’ rights and environmental protections for the sake of dangerous deregulation.

When President Ursula von der Leyen announced late last year an Omnibus proposal to simplify reporting and sustainability requirements for companies, she committed to upholding in full the spirit and “content of the law,” and stated that the goal of the exercise was to reduce overlapping obligations. The proposal published on 26 February represents a stark departure from this promise and, if implemented, will wipe-out the core purpose of these laws.

If implemented, in practice this could result in:

• Civil liability will to a much larger extent be left to EU Member States’ discretion, with the
  potential of drastically reducing access to justice for victims in front of EU courts.
• Companies will only be required to assess harms attributable to direct business partners,
  which reduces drastically the value chain.
• There is no longer an obligation to “put […] into effect” Climate Transition Plans
• [...]
• The frequency of monitoring the effectiveness of due diligence measures is reduced from every year to every 5 years.

[...]

We therefore urge the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that in the upcoming legislative negotiations, the Omnibus proposal is revised to ensure that any amendments seeking to weaken the CSDDD are rejected. Any discussion of the CSDDD should be strictly limited to interpretative measures such as guidance and delegated acts and the text of the law itself should not be subject to any revisions. Regarding the CSRD, the European Parliament and Council should lower the thresholds of in-scope companies and give mid-sized companies a proportionate standard. The limitations on data requests should be reworked.