Our thinking

All aboard the Omnibus?

14 March, 2025

Buried deep in the agenda for the EU Parliament session running this week in Strasbourg was a scheduled debate entitled “Cutting red tape and simplifying business in the EU: the first Omnibus proposals”. Sounds great: who doesn’t want to cut red tape and simplify business?

Well, not all EU Parliamentarians, some of whom have expressed some strongly critical opinions of the Omnibus proposals. For those wanting a quick refresher about the Omnibus, this article from our friends at Mishcon will remind you what is being proposed, and for those wanting to learn more about how the EU Parliament has responded, you can find a report here (summary: no one is happy, but everyone is unhappy for different reasons).

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had lots of conversations with clients about how the Omnibus would impact them. For some, it’s business as usual while for others they have decided to hit pause while we wait to find out whether the proposals will pass. To find out more about how people are responding, last week we asked members of the Good Business Sustainability Leaders Panel to share with us how their organisations are responding to the Omnibus and what it means for sustainability reporting at their organisation.

Over half said that preparation to date for CSRD – regardless of what happens in the future – had given them the opportunity to engage with the board and broader business on sustainability related issues. This is good news – we’ve long argued that the main outcome from enhanced regulation around sustainability disclosure should be more and better business engagement, rather than a whole lot of additional pages in the annual report. However, only one third of our panellists felt that preparations for CSRD had enhanced organisational resilience, suggesting that the business benefits of this engagement are yet to be fully realised. And respondents were even less optimistic about the broader impacts of the Omnibus, should it pass, with 89% saying they thought it would send a signal to businesses that sustainability is not a priority.

The real question is around what those who are in limbo do right now. Most of those respondents who are facing possible changes to their reporting told us they are assuming that the Omnibus proposals will be approved, and as a result have stopped working on their preparation for CSRD, while the remainder have paused efforts while they wait for clarity. While this is an entirely understandable response, it’s still unclear how this will resolve itself and we’d advise caution – with dissent at the Parliament level, it would be unwise to assume that this is the last you’ve heard of CSRD, even if the Omnibus proposals suggest you may be out of scope. Taking what you’ve learned already about your business’s material issues and acting on them is never going to be a bad idea, even if you don’t have to publicly report on them in due course.

By Claire Jost