More than 360 civil society organisations and trade unions demand that in the upcoming legislative negotiations, the Omnibus proposal is revised to ensure that any amendments seeking to weaken corporate accountability, human rights and environmental protection are rejected.
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, which would introduce a dangerous loophole, allowing companies to comply with the provision, in theory, by simply producing a plan on paper, rather than putting it into action.
- EU Member States would no longer be able to establish more ambitious rules than the directive.
- Companies will no longer have to terminate contracts (even in cases where it is possible or likely that abuses continue).
- Stakeholder engagement will be reduced to those “directly” affected.
- The frequency of monitoring the effectiveness of due diligence measures is reduced from every year to every 5 years.
- Removal of the minimum cap on sanctions of 5% of the turnover.
- The Commission is no longer obliged to examine the necessity to apply due diligence rules.
