"A Particularly Worrying Message": What Omnibus I Signals About the EU's Global Role", 24 February 2026

To boost EU competitiveness through regulatory simplification, the European Commission adopted the Omnibus I package, amending key sustainability directives. While framed as a move to reduce burdens, the reforms may risk weakening the EU’s role as a global standard-setter...

Crucially, the amended version of the CSDDD weakens a number of key provisions present in the original text. These changes will have real consequences: overall, they will make it significantly harder for victims of corporate abuse to seek justice and for companies to prevent harm in the first place.

Firstly, the newly amended CSDDD will significantly restrict the scope of the legislation. While the Directive originally applied to companies that earned over €450 million and employed 1,000 or more, the more recent version of the text has a much higher threshold...

While these amendments collectively undermine both access to justice for affected communities and the preventive function of corporate due diligence obligations, it is worth noting that the Directive does still establish some ground rules for corporate accountability. For one, it enacts a legal duty for large companies to respect human rights and the environment throughout their global value chains. What’s more, it requires companies to identify, prevent, stop, and remediate harm to workers, communities, and the environment within and beyond the EU...

Taken together, however, these remaining provisions represent a minimal baseline rather than the ambitious framework originally envisaged...

Through the adoption of the Omnibus I package, the EU is sending a particularly worrying message. At a time of escalating climate and human rights crises, the EU appears to be retreating from its responsibility to hold powerful companies and major polluters accountable. Equally troubling is the scale of internal and external pressure that contributed to this rollback...

The Omnibus package and the manner of its adoption highlight fundamental tensions at the heart of contemporary EU governance: between efficiency in policymaking on the one hand, and respect for EU law and foundational principles on the other...Ultimately, the EU’s credibility as a global actor depends on its ability to remain competitive without renouncing the values that underpin its existence.