The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, a step closer to final approval

After a long process which started with the European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2021 with recommendations to the Commission on corporate due diligence and corporate accountability, and the proposal for a directive issued by the European Commission on February 22, 2022, the European Parliament and the Council announced, in two separate press releases, the provisional deal struck on December 14 in relation to the future directive on corporate sustainability due diligence.

Their press releases describe the main elements that remained to be determined and on which they have finally reached an agreement (scope of the directive, temporary exclusion of the financial sector, various elements on the civil liability of companies, consequences of breach of the obligations imposed on companies,  clarification of the annexes describing the specific human rights and environmental impacts, among others, that it covers). We discussed these and other elements on December 4 in our Garrigues Sustainable Dialog on this same subject.

The political agreement now has to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. The directive will come into force when it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union.