ANNALISA SAVARESI https://uefconnect.uef.fi/en/annalisa.savaresi/
MARGARETHA WEWERINKE-SINGH https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/w/e/m.j.wewerinke-singh/m.j.wewerinke-singh.html?cb
CORINA HERI https://hydr.vub.be/people/corina.heri
Writing on this blog in February 2025, we warned that the European Green Deal had entered a period of sustained political backlash. One year later, many of those concerns have materialised. Under the banners of simplification and competitiveness, the European Commission’s Omnibus reform has fundamentally reshaped significant parts of the Green Deal’s regulatory architecture, while further reforms remain under negotiation. What began as a political backlash has evolved into a broader programme of regulatory retrenchment that is redefining the balance between environmental ambition and economic competitiveness within the European Union. The Draghi report on European competitiveness, pressure from industry associations, and calls from some Member States to reduce regulatory ‘burdens’ have converged to place deregulation at the centre of the Union’s political agenda.
This deregulation however should not be understood as isolated technical amendments to individual legislative instruments. It raises systemic constitutional questions about legal certainty, legitimate expectations, non-regression in environmental protection, the rule of law and the Union’s compliance with its own international obligations under climate and human rights law. The issue is therefore not only whether particular reporting, due diligence or permitting requirements have been simplified, but whether the cumulative effect of these reforms marks a coherent deregulatory turn in the legal architecture of the European Green Deal.
This deregulatory turn is most immediately visible in the EU’s sustainable finance and corporate sustainability framework. Following the Commission’s Omnibus proposals of February 2025, subsequent political agreement between the Parliament and the Council, and the adoption of the first legislative package in early 2026, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) have both been substantially revised.
The CSRD reforms substantially the scope of mandatory sustainability reporting. Reporting obligations for companies that had not yet begun reporting have been postponed, while the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) have been revised with the aim of significantly reducing disclosure requirements. The reforms also abandon sector-specific standards and the planned transition from limited to reasonable assurance, and limit the sustainability information that larger companies may request from smaller undertakings in their value chains.
Equally significant are the revisions to the CSDDD, which substantially reduce the number of companies subject to mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. The revised framework focuses principally on direct business partners, requiring examination of indirect relationships where there is credible information about potential adverse impacts. It also reduces the frequency of periodic assessments, delays implementation, removes the harmonised EU civil-liability regime and weakens administrative enforcement.
The Omnibus reforms also targeted the Taxonomy Disclosures Delegated Act, aligning the scope of mandatory reporting with the amended CSRD. As a result, Taxonomy disclosures apply principally to the largest companies, while remaining voluntary for other undertakings. The reforms also simplify the content of Taxonomy reporting. Notably, this simplification proceeded through the delegated-act route: the Parliament and Council declined to use the Omnibus I Directive itself to reopen the Taxonomy Regulation’s primary text, leaving that Regulation formally unamended.
Furthermore, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) has been amended to exempt importers bringing in no more than 50 tonnes of CBAM goods annually and to simplify administrative requirements. The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) remains subject to a separate review focused on simplifying disclosure requirements and improving the classification of financial products within the wider EU sustainable finance framework.
The deregulatory agenda extends to existing and recently adopted environmental instruments, which are increasingly being contested, delayed or reframed through the language of competitiveness, administrative burden reduction and accelerated permitting. The Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) establishes due diligence obligations intended to prevent products associated with deforestation and forest degradation from being placed on the EU market. Its application has been postponed, and subsequent amendments have eased certain compliance and reporting requirements. The implementation of the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive —the cornerstones of the Natura 2000 network —have also become increasingly contested in debates concerning land use, agriculture and energy infrastructure.
More generally, the EU Commission’s Competitiveness Compass, Clean Industrial Deal, Better Regulation and Simplification framework and simplification agenda reflect a broader reassessment of several Green Deal and other environmental instruments through the lens of competitiveness, reduced administrative burdens, faster permitting and more proportionate regulation. For example, the abandonment of the planned comprehensive revision of the REACH Regulation, together with pressures to simplify the implementation of the revised Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation, have raised concerns that long-awaited improvements in the EU environmental acquis may be delayed or weakened.
The shift in EU priorities is furthermore reflected in the Critical Raw Materials Act. While the Act was originally conceived as a key component of the Green Deal’s industrial strategy, seeking to secure resilient and sustainable supply chains for the raw materials essential to the clean energy transition, its implementation has increasingly been framed through the lens of strategic autonomy, competitiveness and accelerated permitting. The designation of Strategic Projects, together with streamlined authorisation procedures and simplified environmental assessments, has generated renewed debate over how the Union should reconcile the imperative of securing critical minerals with its environmental acquis, biodiversity obligations and commitments to public participation under the Aarhus Convention. These tensions look set to sharpen further: the Commission has proposed amending the CRMA itself, to cap the number of annual Strategic Project calls and to shift the duty to identify large companies using critical raw materials from Member States to the Commission, with Parliament’s negotiating mandate adopted in June 2026 and trilogues expected to follow. The CRMA thus illustrates the broader tension characterising the current phase of Green Deal implementation: maintaining ambitious climate objectives while progressively recalibrating environmental safeguards in pursuit of industrial competitiveness.
The EU’s changing priorities are perhaps most clearly illustrated by the Net-Zero Industry Act. Adopted to strengthen Europe’s manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies, the Regulation seeks to ensure that the Union can meet at least 40 per cent of its annual deployment needs for strategic net-zero technologies through domestic production by 2030. To achieve these objectives, the NZIA introduces accelerated permitting procedures for strategic net-zero projects, streamlines administrative requirements, facilitates access to public and private investment, and promotes carbon capture and storage infrastructure. By presenting accelerated permitting, regulatory streamlining and expanded carbon capture as central instruments of climate policy, the NZIA risks shifting attention from immediate emissions reductions and robust environmental safeguards towards future technological capacity and industrial competitiveness. The prominence of carbon capture in this framework warrants scrutiny, given the uncertainties surrounding its large-scale deployment and the risk that reliance on prospective removals may defer emissions reductions that are feasible today. More broadly, the NZIA illustrates the EU’s reorientation towards industrial resilience, economic security and competitiveness, with potentially significant consequences for environmental assessment, public participation and biodiversity safeguards.
As we noted in our earlier post, these developments raise fundamental constitutional questions about whether the EU is complying with its own obligations, including those arising under the European Climate Law, the Paris Agreement, and human rights law. The benchmarks against which these questions must be assessed have sharpened considerably. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that States are required to put in place, and effectively apply in practice, a regulatory framework capable of mitigating climate change. In its 2025 advisory opinion on the obligations of States in respect of climate change, the International Court of Justice affirmed that States’ climate obligations under both treaty and customary international law are stringent obligations of due diligence, the breach of which may engage State responsibility. Read together, these authorities suggest that the legal space for regulatory regression is far narrower than the current political debate assumes. Many of the concerns identified in this blogpost therefore remain not only relevant but increasingly urgent as the future direction of EU environmental governance continues to evolve.
Against this background, the GNHRE will, over the coming weeks, host a symposium examining the changing landscape of the European Green Deal. The symposium will examine these developments across a range of Green Deal instruments, assessing both the immediate legal consequences of the Omnibus reforms and their broader implications for the future direction of EU environmental governance. In keeping with the Network’s mission, particular attention will be devoted to the human rights implications of the reforms and to their compatibility with the Union’s and its Member States’ obligations under international law. At a time when the future of the Green Deal is being actively renegotiated, we hope these contributions will provide a timely forum for critical reflection on the direction of EU environmental governance.