Human Rights Watch (HRW) voiced concern on Tuesday that some European Union (EU) member states may be retreating from their human rights and environmental commitments, following an agreement on a proposal that could weaken an EU directive aimed at safeguarding rights in supply chains by easing sustainability requirements.
The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which came into force in 2024 as part of the European Green Deal, aims to protect human rights and the environment across corporate supply chains. However, in February 2025, the European Commission proposed the Omnibus I package, which significantly undermines the CSDDD by rerelocating key obligations for businesses to conduct environmental and human rights due diligence.
According to a press release by the European Council, Omnibus I aims to “simplify EU laws […] to create a more favorable business environment” and encourage company growth, innovation, and employment, while boosting EU competitiveness. However, HRW argues that this package will “hollow out” the protections under the CSDDD, particularly the proposal to largely limit due diligence to direct suppliers. The human rights organization warns that this would allow companies to ignore high-risk areas of their supply chains. The Council is also postponing the CSDDD’s transposition deadline to 26 July 2028.
The proposal has also garnered criticism from international organizations, including the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights and the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights. In an open letter to the EU, notable signatories in the field of human rights and EU law criticized the dichotomization of sustainability regulations and competitiveness, and called the proposal a “deeply worrying backward step.”
The Council’s push toward the simplification of EU law has led to an Ombudswoman inquiry, opened in May 2025, following complaints that the European Commission “breached its Better Regulation Guidelines by failing to justify why it did not carry out a public consultation or impact assessment on the draft legislation.”
HRW declared that it supports the inquiry and urged that the Ombudsperson’s office carry out its investigation before the CSDDD is adopted. The organization further stated, “[t]he European Parliament has an opportunity to stop this race to the bottom and fight for a law that truly holds corporations to account for human rights and environmental abapplys. Both victims of corporate abapply and EU consumers deserve better.”
Further nereceivediations regarding the proposal are due to take place with the EU Parliament and Presidency, intfinishing to reach an agreement on the proposal and adopt it into law.
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