Just four weeks after celebrating the European Parliament’s rejection of the initial mandate for negotiations on Omnibus I, we now face a serious blow. The European Parliament has adopted a position that will significantly weaken key EU sustainability legislation.
For the first time, a legislative mandate has been adopted through an alliance between the conservative EPP and the far-right. The mandate goes well beyond the European Commission’s original proposal, further watering down essential social and environmental provisions. This not only creates a dangerous precedent for upcoming files — including the additional Omnibus packages announced by the Commission[1] — but also poses a worrying threat to European democracy.
A mandate that weakens core protections
The Parliament’s position is deeply problematic. Three core elements of the legislation have been significantly eroded:
- Reduced scope: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) would apply only to companies with 1,750 employees (instead of 1,000), and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) only to companies with more than 5,000 employees. In practice, this excludes a large number of companies from their responsibilities.
- No harmonised civil liability: the adopted mandate confirms the deletion of EU-wide harmonisation of civil liability, limits access to third-party representative actions, and removes mandatory application of national civil liability rules in cross-border cases. This weakens legal certainty and undermines victims’ access to justice.
- Restricted risk-based due diligence: Although the mandate reintroduces a risk-based approach, better aligned with international standards, it includes major limitations. For example, companies cannot request information from business partners with fewer than 5,000 employees unless “strictly necessary” and impossible to obtain otherwise. This restriction will lead to critical information gaps and reduce protections for workers — including in high-risk sectors such as transport.
Together, these changes represent a substantial rollback of recently adopted EU rules. Transparency, accountability and access to justice — the very core principles underpinning these laws — have been sacrificed.
Legal experts are warning that the process fails EU law in at least two ways: Firstly, by not demonstrating necessity and proportionality, and secondly, by rolling back existing human rights and environmental protections without proper justification.
A dangerous political shift
The process leading to this outcome is equally alarming. After the EPP publicly pledged to never cooperate with populist and extremist parties, it crossed a dangerous line by forming a de facto alliance with the far right. The vote breaks the longstanding cordon sanitaire and forms a worrying working majority for the remainder of the von der Leyen term. Noone should forget that this result also follows months of intense lobbying by large corporations, pressure from national conservative groups, and influence from external actors including the United States and Qatar.
Next steps: the fight continues
The European Commission and some EU leaders want to move fast. Trilogue negotiations with Member States will begin this month and are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2025.
While this vote marks a major setback, the battle is far from over. We must remain fully mobilised throughout the negotiations, during national implementation, and across the additional Omnibus initiatives already announced by the Commission.
[1] As reminder, this year the European Commission presented several “Omnibus packages” as its main legislative tool to review different legislation. The first on sustainability (CSRD and CS3D) was followed by one on investment, agriculture, defence, chemicals and more recently on digital rules. This mechanism allows for rapid changes to regulations and policies, bypassing the ordinary procedure, such as public consultations and comprehensive impact assessments.
