EIC Key Messages for the Trilogue on CSDDD

More than five years after the launch of the initial EU consultation on Sustainable Corporate Governance - to which EIC responded in 2021 - the trilogue on the so-called ‘Omnibus Package’ on Sustainability Reporting has entered the final negotiation stage. Over the past few weeks and months, the European Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament have each prepared important proposals to relief the bureaucratic burden for affected companies, which must now be reconciled in trilogue.

EIC has supported the introduction of an EU legal framework for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) from the outset under the conditions that such legal act is confined to promoting a uniform EU-wide application of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and of the OECD MNE Guidelines and that the corresponding obligations establish a level playing field between EU and non-EU companies active in the Internal Market.

EIC has now submitted its final Key Messages to trilogue negotiators:

• We welcome the increase of thresholds relating to net worldwide turnover and to the number of employees. Potential market distortions between large and medium-sized construction companies can be mitigated in the case of public contracts through application of Article 31 of the CSDDD.

• We advocate a restriction of the requirement to conduct in-depth assessments to ‘tier 1’ business partners rather than retaining the concept of a two-step analysis for the entire supply chain.

• We endorse the proposition to delete all references to the mandatory adoption of a climate transition plan.

• We support the proposal to replace the ‘duty to terminate’ a business relationship with a ‘duty to suspend temporarily’, and to foresee a further exception if suspension would cause substantial prejudice for a company.

• We welcome that trilogue negotiators have agreed to drop the idea of an EU-harmonised civil liability regime.

We call on trilogue parties to conclude negotiations before the end of the year and to finally establish planning security for affected EU companies by agreeing on practical regulation that does not impose excessive bureaucratic burden.

Please download the full EIC Position Paper here. All further topic-relevant EIC Positions can be obtained here.