Following months of negotiations in the European Parliament, the amendments to the CSRD proposal have been approved by the JURI committee this Tuesday 15th of March.
Frank Bold is the coordinator of the Alliance for Corporate Transparency, a platform gathering leading civil society organisations that has provided landmark research and evidence-based recommendations for the reform and development of the sustainability disclosure framework in the EU. More recently, we coordinated a multi-stakeholder statement on the need to swiftly implement the CSRD and EU standards as well as a joint letter with investors, asset managers and civil society organisations sent to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) calling to broaden the scope of the legislation
The final vote of the JURI committee has disappointed stakeholders by delaying the application of the new rules an additional year (compared to the initial proposal of the EU Commission), which is problematic from the perspective of EU’s green transition, as well as the urgent need to cut Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels from Russia.
On the upside, the text approved in the JURI committee includes several significant improvements on climate and human rights reporting, and tackles the problematic exemption for large subsidiaries to disclose sustainability information.
The CSRD proposal will now enter into the final phase of the legislative process with trilogue negotiations. As stated by Frank Bold’s Susanna Arus, Communications and EU Public Affairs at Frank Bold:
“An ambitious agreement needs to be reached before summer between co-legislators to avoid further delays. The final CSRD text should incorporate changes proposed by the Parliament that aim to strengthen the quality and relevance of corporate transparency on sustainability matters and dismiss counterproductive proposals that reduce the scope of companies or delay the implementation of a reform key to the transition and resilience of the EU economy”
Today, the Council of the EU approved a watered-down version of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). It includes a severely reduced scope: Only about 0,05% of companies across the EU will be subject to the new law, a cut of roughly 2/3 - compared to the December trilogue outcome.
Frank Bold participated in the preparation of a new report examining the changes underway in the European energy sector and the need to modernize electricity grids to accommodate more renewable energy sources with emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
EU policy-makers agreed last night to postpone by two years the deadline for the adoption of sector-specific standards for companies sustainability reporting, which was initially set in the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive for June 2024.
