At today’s trilogue, the most controversial issues in the two-years long Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence legislative process – climate obligations, civil liability, and exemptions for the financial sector – are at stake. The decision-makers in the room have an opportunity to change how we hold corporations accountable – but will they rise to the occasion?
The trilogue is potentially the final one on the file, but significant disagreements remain. There is a standoff between the progressive stance of the European Parliament, and an obstructive approach from the Council. The French government has deployed unprecedented efforts to exclude the entire financial sector from the legislation, despite Emmanuel Macron stressing at COP28 that the world’s financial system is not doing enough to support the climate transition. The German government wants to block obligations to implement climate transition plans and the right for citizens to take polluting companies to court, while both countries are attempting to scrap references to the Paris Agreement from the text.
To draw attention to the risk of letting multinationals off the hook, the Justice is Everybody’s Business campaign brought their call for an effective CSDDD right to the door of the decision-makers. Last night, campaigners conspicuously projected their demands for corporate justice onto the Commission’s Berlaymont building in Brussels. The action follows a petition laying out ten core demands for the CSDDD, signed by 100,000 Europeans.
Photos of the projection can be accessed here.
Alban Grosdidier, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said:
“France and Germany’s campaign against strong, enforceable climate obligations is unacceptable; they are attempting to turn a potentially groundbreaking climate law into yet another greenwashing opportunity for big business. It is absurd to even propose to remove the Paris Agreement from the text. Excluding the financial sector would be a lost opportunity to challenge its continuous support to the climate-wrecking fossil fuel sector – and genuinely transform corporate behaviour.”
Anya Frances Verkamp, coordinator of the Justice is Everybody’s Business campaign, said:
“The current stance of the Council is moral blackmail. They’re proposing to trade off the inclusion of necessary human rights standards for the exclusion of finance and comprehensive environmental standards. There’s no constructive argument for this, and with this they’re gutting the spirit of the directive.”
The public supports a strong CSDDD. In 2023, a YouGov survey across ten European countries found that:
74% of citizens support an EU law which would require all companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
64% believe banks must also be held accountable for the actions of businesses they invest in or lend money to.
Background: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is a broad legal package designed to make multinational corporations operating in the EU market prevent human rights harm, environmental destruction and emissions contributing to the climate crisis in their value chains – meaning not only in relation to their own direct operations, but also their suppliers’, their distributors’, and their customers’.
