EU’s threatened corporate due-diligence rowback raises ‘deep concerns’ from left

A prospective U-Turn on landmark EU corporate supply-chain rules is raising “deep concern” among centre-left MEPs, potentially endangering  the centrist coalition recently mustered by President Ursula von der Leyen to secure a second term, according to a letter seen by Euronews.  

The EU’s Corporate Due Diligence Directive requires companies to check their supply chains for dodgy environmental and labour practices, to try and avoid disasters like Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh garment factory whose collapse in 2013 cost over 1,000 lives.  

But that law, known as the CSDDD, only just scraped through the EU legislative process earlier this year. It was watered down, and nearly fully derailed, after Germany and Italy voiced concerns about the impact on competitiveness.  

EU elections in June swung the European Parliament to the right, and there’s now increasing pressure to boost Europe’s sluggish economy – perhaps by rethinking green laws.

The idea that Brussels is reconsidering CSDDD rules before they’ve even taken effect is causing ripples in the left of the Parliament, who argue it will undermine Brussels’ credibility and businesses' legal certainty. 

“We would like to express our deep concerns regarding your announcement of an omnibus simplification package due as early as February 2025,” said the letter, signed by socialist group chair Iratxe García Pérez, party grandees Ana Catarina Mendes and René Repasi, and Lara Wolters, the Dutch MEP who led Parliament’s talks on the law.  

In November remarks to reporters, von der Leyen said she wanted to look again at “overlapping” rules contained in the CSDDD, a separate Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that applies to all large and listed companies, and a green