Omnibus proposal: EU Commission bows to big business, betrays workers

Approved in June 2024, the CSDDD imposes mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence obligations on large companies based in and operating in the EU. The law mandates in-scope businesses to check their value chains for rights violations and to remedy harm they may cause to workers, communities and the environment. Yet, in an unprecedented change of direction, the President of the Commission decided to re-open the  CSDDD text late last year under the guise of a ‘simplification effort’. These amendments come two years prior to the law having even entered into force and while the transposition process has already started. 

"The text just tabled disproves previous statements by the Commission reassuring that simplification is not de-regulation. Clearly, the new trend in Europe is marching to the tune of big business, even at the cost of undoing the Union’s own laws," said Muriel Treibich, Lobby and Advocacy Coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign.

The changes proposed reduce the number of companies covered by the law, re-define the value chain scope, asking companies only to check their immediate suppliers, and weaken judicial and administrative enforcement procedures.

"Human rights and environmental due diligence is useless to workers if it is toothless", said Kalpona Akter, founder of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, a member of the Clean Clothes Campaign. "The workers who make clothes for European brands were counting on the EU to provide credible avenues to remedy the abuse by fashion brands they have to endure every day. By scrapping enforcement procedures, the EU is telling big companies that violating workers’ rights is an acceptable business model", she added.

The Omnibus proposal will now be discussed by the European Parliament and EU Member States, who will have to agree on their own version of the law. "The process leading to this Omnibus so far has made a mockery of EU law-making and democratic principles," stated Giuseppe Cioffo, Corporate Accountability Coordinator at the Clean Clothes Campaign. "We urge Members of the European Parliament and Member States to put labour and human rights before profit, and to bring the text of the proposal in line with what originally agreed", he stated.

PRESS CONTACTS

Giuseppe Cioffo, Corporate Accountability Coordinator, giuseppe@cleanclothes.org +32 492 49 16 68

Muriel Treibich, Lobby and Advocacy Coordinator, muriel@cleanclothes.org  +32 471 64 09 34