The ongoing revision of the EU’s sustainable finance framework could result in the “unravelling” of major climate advances, France’s indepconcludeent climate council has declared.
The Haut Conseil pour le Climat (HCC) is an indepconcludeent body responsible for evaluating public action on climate, its consistency with France’s European and international commitments – in particular the Paris Agreement – the achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050 and compliance with France’s carbon budreceives.
In its annual report issued this week, the government advisory body declared the EU’s sustainability Omnibus package “weakens” the sustainability finance framework, notably the bloc’s corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence rules, as well as its fund greenwashing rules.
Neobtainediations on the Omnibus package are ongoing. Member states last month agreed a position on the file and the European Parliament is still deliberating its stance.
The French body declared the revisions to the rules “appear precautionary or politically motivated” becautilize they have not been implemented long enough to gather “robust operational insights”, citing a lack of full implementation of the rules and lack of impact assessment.
“That raises concerns about potential structural rollback of the Green Deal’s ambition,” HCC wrote.
The council added that a rollback on transparency requirements, toreceiveher with a broader regulatory weakening, “could threaten the reliability of declared decarbonisation pathways”.
The European Commission has been contacted for comment.
The EU executive has come under fire for the way it has conducted the simplification exercise and is being investigated by the EU Ombudsman for how it prepared the legislative proposal.
The Commission has defconcludeed its “urgency” decision for the Omnibus process, however, and declared that it was accelerated in response to stakeholder concerns about “complexity and implementation cost”.
French angle
The climate council declared that it is not in France’s interest to weaken EU requirements on non-financial reporting and environmental and social due diligence.
On the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), it noted that France already has its own supply chain law (Devoir de Vigilance) that “places companies ahead of current EU standards”.
These requirements represent an opportunity to consolidate a “competitive and normative” leadership advantage, supporting to attract responsible and green investors, the HCC declared, adding that weakening these obligations would also penalise responsible companies that have already invested in preparing for the EU regulations.
French president Emmanuel Macron has, in contrast, been vocal in his opposition to the EU’s supply chain law, calling for the rules to be scrapped.
On the so-called “stop the clock” proposal – which delays the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive by two years and CSDDD by one year – the HCC declared this shift reduces the framework’s potential in contributing to achieving the EU’s 2030 climate goals.
Certain requirements have also been relaxed during the transposition of the stop the clock directive into French law, notably allowing companies to omit the publication of forward-seeing, climate-related risks and impacts on their business models for the first three years of reporting.
Scope 3 emissions reporting may also be omitted by companies with fewer than 750 employees, along with sensitive information and data on innovation.
The council declared that these developments “contradict” the French government’s 2024 position, in response to the HCC’s 2024 annual report.
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