Omnibus I: EU sustainability and Due diligence legislation
Right and far right united to destroy our major tool to protect our business and our jobs.
The Greens/EFA Group did not support the omnibus I package which completely dilutes the EU's sustainability and due diligence legislation.
Terry Reintke, Greens-EFA Co-President comments:
“After weeks of obstruction and blackmail, the conservative EPP has broken off negotiations with the three centrist groups and decided to crack the “cordon sanitaire”. They chose to join forces with Orbán and Le Pen to kill environmental and human rights laws that make big companies responsible for their production process.
Blinded by their rage towards the Green Deal, the EPP dismantled a legislation that not only protected the environment or prevent child labour in the value chain , but also preserved our businesses and our workers.
The EU sustainability and due diligence legislation was indeed the best tool to discourage companies from relocating to countries that do not respect social, environmental or human rights. In other words, the Right and the Far Right destroyed our ability to regulate economic stakeholders and our major instrument for encouraging companies to preserve and create jobs within the EU. “
Bas Eickhout, Greens-EFA Co-President comments:
“Today, reactionary forces in the Parliament have buried legislation to improve the competitiveness of the EU economy and to protect jobs.
The Greens/EFA Group supports making EU rules easier to follow for all businesses, including large companies and SMEs. But what the Right and Far Right have done is not simplification but deregulation.
The winners in this maneuver are the big corporations that we won’t ever be able to stop from relocating to increase their profits. One more blow at the expense of EU jobs, cutting-edge investments not to mention our planet or human rights and, more generally, our democracy.
This reactionary Omnibus penalises front runner companies and rewards those that have chosen to lag behind and to gamble on a political amnesty.
The Greens-EFA refuses to be complicit in a political project that destroys the EU and its values. If the Right wants to continue in this direction with forces that reject the EU and its project of shared prosperity, it won’t be in our name.”
*The Omnibus I concerns three fundamental pieces of legislation: The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
