European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Valdis Dombrovskis, now Commissioner for Implementation and Simplification, in 2022
Today the European Commission published its omnibus proposal on sustainability, claiming it will provide much needed legal certainty.
While Ursula von der Leyen promises to "simplify" the laws passed during her first term, this proposal feels more like a U-turn — one that risks weakening the very regulations designed to hold corporations accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains.
The proposed changes to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) would significantly water down the law and exacerbate companies’ ability to avoid responsibility for their broader supply chain impacts. Some of the proposed amendments include:
- Focusing due diligence obligations on direct business partners – which could allow companies to evade responsibility for environmental harms and human rights abuses in parts of their supply chains
- Removing the requirement for Member States to ensure that individuals can hold companies accountable through civil liability if a company’s failure to carry out proper due diligence causes harm or damage
- Removing the rights of victims to be represented by an NGO or trade union in cases where they have insufficient means to represent themselves
- Reducing the frequency with which companies have to assess the effectiveness of due diligence measures from every year to every 5 years
- Postponing the entry into application for the largest EU companies by one year
This legislative process is just beginning and it’s likely to open more opportunities to further weaken the CSDDD, a law that barely passed the first time.
The proposal still needs to pass through both the EU Council and EU Parliament, leaving much uncertainty, but also creating an opportunity for EU Member States to hold the line and defend corporate accountability.
Simplification cannot mean deregulation. These laws must be enforced at least in their current form to be meaningful and effective. If the Commission does not recognise the importance of this, it is up to the Council and Parliament to reject these proposed changes. Such a move would send a strong message to the Commission that its mission to deregulate goes against EU values, lacks transparency, and creates uncertainty for all parties involved.
Read the Commission’s press release here.
