European Parliament votes on Omnibus I
With 382 votes in favour, 249 against, and with 13 abstentions, Parliament adopted its negotiating position on simplified sustainability reporting and due diligence duties for businesses.
MEP Warborn (Sweden/EPP), rapporteur, saw many of his amendments deleting obligations for companies being aprooved. In order to reach his objective, EPP, ECR and Patriots aligned their orientation vote.
Main outcome
Summary
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Sustainability reporting would be lighter and only necessary for larger companies
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Due diligence obligations would apply only to very large EU and non-EU corporations
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Transition plan would not be required, and businesses would be liable at the national level
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New digital portal for businesses with free access to templates, guidelines and information on all EU reporting requirements
In more detail
Climate transition plans: the latter were compulsory in the text, are no longer compulsory in Parliament’s report. Companies with more than 5,000 employees and a turnover of more than €1.5 billion would no longer need to draw up a climate transition plan if they do not wish to do so.
Scope: the scope of companies covered by the CSRD directive compared to the Council’s position is further reduced.
From now on, only companies with more than 1,750 employees and sales of more than €450 million will have to comply. The compromise with the left-wing groups, like the Council’s position, stopped at 1,000 employees.
The thresholds remain the same for the Due Diligence Directive: 5,000 employees and sales of €1.5 billion.
Due diligence: In keeping with efforts to ease the burden on businesses, the obligations to prevent negative impacts on the environment and social rights in the value chain have been made more flexible. For example, efforts can be concentrated where the risks are greatest, and companies will be able to rely on information that is already available, without having to make detailed enquiries of their commercial partners.
The rapporteur also received a majority of votes in favour of removing approximate amounts for fines. The compromise reached at the centre set a maximum mandatory threshold of 5% of turnover, so that Member States would not have been able to transpose a lower percentage into their law.
This clarification has been removed so that each country can set the fines it wishes, according to the text adopted by Parliament.
Civil liability: at European level has been abolished.
More information
- Marta Machado
- [email protected]
