The proposed changes concern the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (among others, postponing the application of all reporting requirements for the so-called wave 2 and 3 companies), the Taxonomy Regulation and the Carbon order Adjustment Mechanism Regulation. For the CSDDD which is of key interest to corporate due diligence, the main points can be summarized as follows:

(i) The level of the «full harmonization» of norms regarding core due diligence is extended with the consequence that EU Member States cannot introduce stricter rules (Art. 4). As a result, enterprises are less likely confronted with different regulatory frameworks in the cross-border business which ensure a level playing field.

(ii) The term «stakeholder» is narrowed down to directly concerned actors, restricting the number of persons that can potentially be involved in the due diligence processes (Art. 3 para. 1 let. n and Art. 13).

(iii) The personal scope of the identification and assessment of adverse effects is reduced to the direct business partners (and in case of enterprises with less than 500 employees even with reduced information requirements); in respect of indirect business partners, the corresponding tasks only emerge if plausible information (NGOs, media) about such effects is available (Art. 8).

(iv) A termination of an existing business relationship in case of non-remediation of adverse effects is not anymore required (Art. 11).

(v) The periodic assessments of the own operations (compliance) are prolonged from 12 months to 5 years; only if a specific cause is given, an interim monitoring is required (Art. 15).

(vi) The not very clear rules on the penalties will be concretized in (new) Guidelines to be jointly developed by the Commission and the Member States (Art. 27).

(vii) The harmonized regulations on civil liability are deleted and the civil liability regime is left to the Member States with the provision that full compensation (but no punitive overcompensation) should be awarded if a damage is caused by non-compliance with due diligence obligations under the CSDDD (Art. 29).

(viii) The adopted CSDDD requested the Commission to submit a report analysing the inclusion of financial services into its scope. Now, this review clause is deleted, i.e. financial services remain outside the scope of the CSDDD (Art. 36).

During the next months, the legislative process will take place in the EU; since the Commission was the strongest promoter of a strict CSDDD in the past, it appears unlikely that the «Simplification Omnibus» will be heavily contested by the Parliament and the Council.