We express our deep concern regarding the Commission’s proposals to amend the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Due Diligence Directive. The changes, if adopted, could undermine the effectiveness of these two recently adopted pieces of legislation and the important achievements they represented for disability rights and inclusion.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive was set to make significant changes to how companies reported on their inclusion of persons with disabilities, as employers and customers or users of services. Crucially, it included the “inclusion and employment of persons with disabilities” as part of the social factors that companies had to report on. The Due Diligence Directive aims to ensure companies identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts in their operations and supply chains. In its recitals, it refers to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a legal framework that companies must take into account.
On 26 February, the Commission released an “Omnibus” proposal, watering down the agreements previously reached on these two directives. This revision sets out a number of especially troubling changes, in particular a drastic reduction in the scope of the companies to be subject to mandatory sustainability reporting requirements. It would limit the mandatory application of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive to companies with more than 1000 employees. This will exclude 80% of the companies from the scope of the Directive and significantly weaken its effectiveness.
Other changes that we also regret include:
- the general delays in the implementation of both Directives.
- the exclusion of civil society organisations as part of the notion of stakeholders in the new definitions in the Due Diligence Directive.
- the proposal for a future Delegated Act to revise the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which provide guidelines for companies to report on their sustainability practices and impacts. The Commission now aims to simplify and “streamline” these standards. . This change will severely call into question the reporting companies will have to do on their actions to make workplaces, products and services more inclusive of persons with disabilities.
The European Disability Forum would like to warn the EU institutions against the risks of revising the existing Sustainability Reporting Standards and we strongly urge them to keep the current ones that explicitly mention persons with disabilities. Furthermore, we call for robust implementation mechanisms for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and urge swift action on the future implementation guidelines, especially as regards the interpretation of the UN Convention.
Finally, we also urge EU institutions to re-consider the liability mechanisms as set out in the original proposal, as well as for any other regulatory mechanism that will support the meaningful implementation of the Directive.