EU Commission’s Omnibus sustainability plans aim for simplification, but are simply inadequate
When the starting position of a piece of legislation seeks to limit some of the most critical aspects of its due diligence requirements simply to companies of 1,000 employees or more, then you know there are serious problems ahead.
But that is precisely the EU Commission’s stance with regards to its ‘Omnibus’ proposals unveiled today, which it claims are designed to streamline its approach to a raft of sustainability legislation across corporate responsibilities.
It has to be said that the key European organisation’s claims that around $6 billion in admin costs will be saved by taking such an approach very much ring hollow when you contrast that with actually whether its position will deliver on a stated goal of making businesses supply chains more transparent, as well as socially and environmentally more responsible.
As Antonie Fountain, founder of NGO, the Voice Network, noted in response to the proposed legislation’s release in our story earlier one of the most damning aspects of the proposals are what he described as a dismantling of due diligence requirements’ that is limited to just tier one suppliers – taking huge chunk of businesses (80%) out of compliance requirements. This is perhaps the most startling aspect – just how is it possible to have sustainability if most companies don’t actually have to engage with it at all?
Similarly, another equally concerning proposition from the EU Commission comes in the form of its proposals for corporate due diligence – asserting that the narrow and elite group of firms that would be subject to the frameworks would now only have to report on major matters of environmental impact and child labour monitoring every five years, down from the original plans of an annual review. That single point alone is an epic downgrade of policy that should not be allowed to pass through the European Parliament.
There are plenty of others who have voiced their fears over the proposals as well, including Richard Gardiner, strategic public policy lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance.
In his view, the EU Commission proposals reduced the management of climate change to a ‘tickbox exercise’ for companies, as well as failing on numerous other counts including its due diligence focus on Tier One companies alone, as well as the proposals actively seeking to prevent companies from tightening up the legislation – which he believed was essentially toothless in its proposed format.
Furthermore, in a special guest blog this week for Confectionery Production, Bastien Sachet, CEO, Earthworm Foundation notes, the voice of companies that are acknowledging that ‘there’s no business tomorrow if we don’t renovate Factory Earth’ with appropriate and robust environmental legislation also demonstrated that weak, loophole filled regulations are simply not worth the paper they are printed on.
There are so many sectors that are impacted by this series of legislation, including the cocoa industry that will be negatively impacted by the so called simplification of sustainability. They are already facing delays to the much-promised EUDR laws, which have themselves been put on a backburner for a year in the wake of intense lobbying. As for the corporate due diligence frameworks – these are facing double that hold-up, with the EU proposing to push them back by two years until 2028. Is this really the best they can suggest given the acknowledged climate crisis we are all collectively facing?
The topics above from the EU Commission were all in fact leaked out this week, but the actual publication of the proposals has confirmed to the extent that to all intents and purposes, the original sustainability legislation as a whole has been remarkably weakened rather than streamlined.
As Antonie Fountain puts it, it’s not so much of an “Omnibus, as an Omnishambles,” which requires a major series of amendments to bring it back into a place that resembles its original intent. This surely can’t be good news for either business, the world or the supply chain communities that are relying on Europe to do the right thing and put the planet and its people before shareholders profits.
Neill Barston, editor, Confectionery Production magazine
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