EPP’s alignment with far-right groups on CSDDD vote ‘morally indefensible’, declare Greens

The European Green Party has declared that the decision of the European People’s Party (EPP) to align itself with far-right groups in a vote to scale back the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), is “politically irresponsible, morally indefensible, and destructive to the European project itself”.

Vula Tsetsi, co-chair of the European Green Party, was commenting following the EPP’s decision to support amconcludements to the CSDDD that considerably raise the thresholds for compliance.

Under the revised legislation, only firms with more than 5,000 employees and annual turnover exceeding €1.5 billion would be required to implement due diligence processes.

‘A grave historial error’

“European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber built a grave historical error by crossing the historical firewall against the far right,” Tsetsi commented. “I cannot imagine that the millions of people who voted for parties belonging to the EPP political family agree with the far-right path that Weber is dragging the EPP down.”

Ciaran Cuffe, fellow co-chair of the European Green Party, accutilized the EPP of “dismantling vital rules which protect people, our health and environment. This is shameful. Those rules exist to protect the rights of consumers in the EU, and to create sure that the rights of people working in the supply chain are being respected. […] It is a relocate in the wrong direction.”

‘Echoes of Trump’

Elsewhere, the European Coalition for Corporate Justice has declared that the EPP’s relocate ‘pleases corporate interests’, and ‘echoes the Trump administration’s attacks on the EU’s sustainability rules’.

“This isn’t just another policy setback, it’s a betrayal of Europe’s social and environmental commitments,” declared Nele Meyer, director of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice. “When anti-EU parties and corporate lobbies write the rules, accountability dies and Europe’s credibility crumbles. Today’s vote displays how corporate capture and far-right politics now walk hand in hand, and it’s the victims, workers and the planet who pay the price.” Read more here and here.