The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union Omnibus has unveiled his position today, setting the tone for upcoming negotiations.
Jörgen Warborn, a Swedish politician belonging to Europe’s centre-right European People’s Party (EEP), has published a draft report on how to reform the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
The 63-page document calls for a more aggressive reduction in the number of companies covered by the EU’s environmental and social disclosure standards.
While the European Commission has proposed raising the threshold for CSRD so that only companies with more than 1,000 employees are in scope, Warborn will push for this to be raised to 3,000 employees.
He wants to ban companies from requesting sustainability data from businesses in their supply chains with fewer than 3,000 staff, too, to ensure small firms are not further burdened.
In a statement, WWF said the plan would “effectively dismantle the reporting ecosystem that banks, insurers, and investors rely on, resulting in less clarity and higher risks”.
Warborn will also fight for the due diligence requirements outlined in CS3D to be reduced in scope and ambition.
He wants climate transition plans to be removed from the directive, meaning companies would not have to develop and implement long-term decarbonisation plans.
Today’s report will serve as the foundation for the next stage of negotiations within EPP – European Parliament’s biggest and most influential party – as well as among other parties.
Warborn will present the document to the JURI committee of Parliament, which is responsible for overseeing the Omnibus negotiations, later this month.
At that point, other parties will be invited to submit amendments, and technical discussions will begin in July.
Based on various statements and positions issued by other parties and committees on the EU Omnibus recently, there will be plenty to fight over during the negotiations.
Warborn is likely to have overstated his ambition to weaken CSRD and CS3D, in order to give himself space to compromise with Members of European Parliament (MEP) on the left, who will seek to preserve the original laws.
Speaking on LinkedIn today, Danish MEP Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, who is a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance, said her party would “go into the discussions constructively, with an aim of preserving the original goals of the legislation – for the sake of people and our planet”.
Parliament is not expected to agree on its final negotiating position until at least October.
In the meantime, the Council of the European Union may discuss its position on the Omnibus in a Committee of Permanent Representatives next week.
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Sophie is IPE's ESG contributing editor.
She is the founder of Real Economy Progress and a senior associate at the University of Oxford.
Sophie's journalistic experience includes being editor of Responsible Investor and Environmental Finance.View full Profile
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