EU omnibus proposal will undermine climate rules, says MEP Pietikäinen

The EU is undermining its climate rules with the commission’s proposed sustainability omnibus bill, MEP Sirpa Pietikäinen said on the Sustainability Omnibus Podcast.

“The commission is not only throwing the baby [out] with the bathing water, it’s throwing the baby and leaving the bathing water,” she said.

Instead, Brussels should simplify the reporting scheme and have easy access to the reporting data on a single access point. The stated objective of the EU omnibus proposal is simplification because as it stands now there are several pieces of legislation covering sustainability reporting.

Yet the European Commission is planning to raise the threshold that would require reporting,  excluding 80% of companies that sit under the current corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD). So the EU is actually preventing a competitive market by removing these requirements for the majority of businesses to show their climate data, Pietikäinen said.

Companies will likely turn to private reporting mechanisms if the current proposal passes, and preventing this was why the EU climate reporting directives were passed in the first place.

“It seems that now there’s something detrimentally wrong with the commission proposal when it does not solve the issues it was supposed to solve and that parliament was calling for. It actually hinders and creates more administrative burdens,” she said.

Pietikäinen made the comments despite her party – the European People’s Party (EPP) – taking a stance in support of the omnibus.

The EU council and parliament have approved a delay of the CSRD and the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD) as the rest of the omnibus proposal is considered. The EU parliament has pencilled in amendment votes for October, with Swedish MEP Jörgen Warborn leading negotiations between political groups. Warborn is expected to submit a draft report in early June with recommendations on the omnibus proposal which will then be voted on in plenary.

Pietikäinen said the EU needs to scale up its climate finance investment and competition, which is why there should be more coherent rules on the European level. It’s not about less regulation but about better regulation, she said.

While the EU has said it won’t give up on its goals of reducing emissions, “you do not achieve your targets if you do not walk the walk”.

“I might not be giving up on my targets on getting into better shape and going to [the] gym … but if I sit here on my sofa and eat a bit of chocolate cake … and say well I am not giving up my targets, I’ve still got my targets! The question is, what happens if the actions are contradicting your targets?”

To hear the rest of what Sirpa Pietikäinen has to say about the EU’s omnibus proposal, check out the latest episode of the Sustainability Omnibus Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms.

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