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Unilever claims lobbying has positive impact in first CSRD report

28 March, 2025

It’s been an exciting month for corporate sustainability reporting nerds (hello). Despite lingering uncertainty around the EU’s proposed Omnibus updates to reporting and due diligence, companies are cracking on with publishing their first CSRD reports — and there are some interesting insights already emerging.

One that’s caught our attention is how Unilever and Volkswagen have both declared their lobbying impacts as positive in their double materiality assessments. Under the CSRD, companies must identify their impacts on people and planet and label them accordingly — positive, negative or neutral.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, the fact that it’s been spotted and widely debated is evidence that CSRD is doing its job: increasing transparency and creating space for public scrutiny. That scrutiny will only intensify, so companies need to ensure their disclosures are robust and defensible.

In Unilever’s case, the claim seems justifiable. InfluenceMap gives it a high score for climate-aligned lobbying, and it’s made headlines for distancing itself from trade associations that don’t share its values. When your actions match your words, you’re in a stronger position to make bold claims.

And scrutiny of lobbying activity is going nowhere. The revised B Corp standards now include a “Government affairs & collective action” topic, asking businesses to show how they’re influencing the system for good. It’s a clear sign that what you do outside the business — who you support, how you show up in public discourse — is as important as what you do inside.

As reporting frameworks tighten and stakeholder expectations grow, “positive lobbying” isn’t just a label — it’s a claim you’ll need to prove. For the companies that can back it up, this new era of transparency might just be a win.

By Louise Podmore