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 European Parliament has adopted its negotiating position on the proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). A majority of 366 Members of the Parliament voted in favour of almost all the amendments endorsed by the Committee on Legal Affairs in April, with 225 votes against and 38 abstentions.
More than a half of the energy consumed in the EU is used to heat and cool homes, offices, shops and other premises. In the context of the EU's efforts to reduce emissions, the decarbonisation of the heating sector is therefore inevitable. But how to achieve a successful transformation of the heating sector in the Czech Republic? We have reviewed examples of community heating plants abroad and outlined solutions applicable in CZ as well.
By the end of July, the European Commission is expected to adopt its first set of sustainability reporting standards (ESRS). The standards will impact 50,000 European companies and thousands international corporate groups. As part of the EU Corporate Sustainability Directive (CSRD) ecosystem, they will require large companies to report information on their sustainability impacts on people and planet as well as their sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
