On 25 July 2024, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) entered into force, establishing legal obligations for businesses to respect human rights and the environment – a milestone for affected groups, progressive companies, and the business and human rights movement. However, progress proved to be fragile and the file was reopened as part of an 'Omnibus Simplification Package' along with other key EU Green Deal laws including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a process which is currently ongoing.

The CSDDD as enacted in summer 2024 represents a compromise reached after a long and intense legislative process. Large companies based or operating in the EU market are required to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence across their global 'chains of activities.' The text gives more (while still insufficient) weight to victims' right to remedy, through a harmonised civil liability norm that enhances clarity for all sides, and emphasises 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 fall under the original Directive's scope.

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.

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

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

Legislative process

The Commission's published its Omnibus I draft package on 26 February 2025, including plans to eradicate harmonised civil liability and focus companies' due diligence on their direct (tier 1) suppliers – some say a "bitter irony", considering that this approach, pushed for by certain lobbies in the German Supply Chain Act already, is known to increase the risk of tick-box compliance and 'bureaucratic' company 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, 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 was a compromise forced via conservative threats to otherwise side with the far right.

On 13 November 2025, the European Parliament voted on its trilogue position, with 382 MEPs in favour, 249 against, and 13 abstaining. The position was based on conservative (EPP) amendments and voted through together with the far right in an unprecedented move. Like the forced JURI compromise, it proposes to limit the CSDDD’s scope to companies with over 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion turnover, but further narrows the CSRD's scope and removes climate transition plans, a civil liability review clause and other elements in the CSDDD. One of the few remaining positive aspects in the Parliament's position after this seismic vote is its reintroduction of a risk-based approach to due diligence at least in principle.

Triologue negotiations between EU Parliament, Commission and Council started on 18 November 2025 and could conclude in December – a final opportunity to recalibrate Omnibus 'simplification' at EU level and maintain the substance of laws vital for rightsholders, the environment, and Europe's long-term resilience. The EU's '4 column table' details Parliament and Council amendments to the Commission's Omnibus I proposal; a summary of the different positions is below (credits to Frank Bold).

As part of the Omnibus I package, a so-called 'Stop-the-clock' law has already postponed the deadline for national CSDDD transposition by one year to 26 July 2027.

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

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