A package of legislative reforms on corporate reporting duties, known as the ‘Omnibus Package’, will soon be unveiled by the European Commission.  The package aims to simplify and streamline sustainability regulations, making reporting obligations more straightforward for businesses. Since its announcement in November, it has sent shockwaves across the EU, sparking much debate and pushback from various groups. Civil society organisations (CSOs), trade unions, businesses, investors, lawyers and scholars have all raised concerns about the Omnibus Package’s potential to lead to deregulation, urging the Commission to protect, rather than weaken, those instruments.  Andriana Loredan of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) explains what is at stake and why CSOs like ECCJ oppose the Omnibus Package.

Competitiveness used as a pretext for deregulation of much-needed sustainability regulations

The Omnibus Package focuses on three key sustainability instruments at the heart of the European Green Deal, namely the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Taxonomy Regulation. This package is a direct result of the new Commission’s shift in direction, which began with Mario Draghi’s report on the Future of European Competitiveness in September 2024. Draghi’s report partly attributes the stagnation of EU markets to excessive regulatory burdens for businesses, while conveniently overlooking other key factors, like oil, gas and food inflation driven by speculation by multinational companies. According to Draghi’s report, the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence framework is a major source of regulatory burden. Without evidence linking sustainability legislation to the perceived lack of EU competitiveness, this narrow perspective has become a pretext for potentially dismantling sustainability legislation altogether.

With this particular Omnibus Package, the Commission intends to simplify some of the most critical instruments recently adopted to address big businesses’ impacts on people and the environment. This includes the CSDDD, which was adopted only last year and has yet to be implemented.

Any discussion of Omnibus’ content remains speculative for now. However, one of the most significant risks associated with Omnibus is the legislative reopening of sustainability instruments, which could result in the renegotiation of key provisions (like civil liability or climate transition plans under the CSDDD). ECCJ strongly opposes reopening previously agreed-upon sustainability legislation. This would increase regulatory uncertainty, jeopardise businesses’ respect for human rights and the environment and penalise first movers.

Disproportionate business influence in the midst of a flawed consultation process

The announcement of the Omnibus Package and the Commission’s development of its proposal have been conducted with a total lack of transparency and with no regard for EU treaty law or the Commission’s own procedural rules.

The Commission intends to present its Omnibus initiative within a very short timeframe, which does not allow for an adequate impact assessment and public consultation. This approach is incompatible with the right to participate in EU decision-making processes, a democratic principle protected by EU treaty law. It also contradicts the Commission’s own Better Regulation Guidelines, which require broad and transparent stakeholder consultation during the Commission’s policymaking process.

Instead, in February 2025, the Commission held a semblance of consultation, a so-called ‘reality check’, with a small, selective group of stakeholders, primarily large companies and business associations. Many of these companies are currently facing legal action for human rights or environmental abuse in their own operations or value chain. Thus, they have a vested interest in weakening sustainability legislation, at the expense of workers, local communities and the climate. Furthermore, the disproportionate representation of large businesses contrasted sharply with the underrepresentation of civil society. CSOs, trade unions and small businesses were only symbolically represented, while victims of corporate abuse and businesses advocating sustainability regulations were completely excluded from the conversation.

Omnibus Package: a potential threat to ambitious climate policies

President Ursula von der Leyen and Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, who oversees the entire ‘simplification’ drive, appear to be aligning with the agenda of the largest, most powerful corporations. In particular, the Commission’s key partners during the so-called reality check included companies whose business activities significantly contribute to climate change and who have an interest in reducing climate obligations, such as companies in the oil, gas, petrochemical, automotive and financial sectors. Given the current climate crisis and its adverse impacts on people and the environment, this raises concerns about whether the Omnibus Package will be a step backwards for climate policies.

The Commission’s priority should be implementation rather than deregulation

If the Commission is truly concerned with competitiveness and a reduced regulatory burden, as well as human rights and climate justice, it should consider how to effectively implement sustainability instruments. This can easily be done by developing guidelines to assist companies and Member State authorities, as specified in the CSDDD, as well as developing funding and capacity building. This approach would address the Draghi report’s criticism of a lack of guidance to facilitate the application of EU sustainability legislation.

Ultimately, secretly rewriting crucial sustainability regulations behind closed doors, with some of the world’s largest corporations, is hardly the path towards achieving genuine competitiveness. 

Andriana Loredan is a policy officer at the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) and has been involved in advocacy on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive since the proposal was first published in 2022. She previously worked on the topic of business and human rights from a forced labour perspective, at Anti-Slavery International.