(Bloomberg) -- Some of France’s largest companies, including Amundi SA and Electricite de France SA, have signed a letter to European policymakers urging them to ensure the bloc sticks with its current timetable for implementing ESG reporting rules.
The companies are responding to a growing wave of opposition to environmental, social and governance requirements, most recently in the form of German efforts to delay the rollout of reporting rules.
C3D, a Paris-based group that represents more than 400 members including L’Oreal SA and Carrefour SA, said the planned rules provide “essential tools to ensure European companies are prepared for ESG risks and can thrive in a competitive global economy,” according to the Jan. 6 letter seen by Bloomberg. The letter was signed by the companies’ chief sustainability officers and addressed to the European Union commissioners overseeing the rules.
Germany has asked the EU to delay implementation of its landmark ESG disclosure rulebook — the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive — and to exempt smaller companies from CSRD. The plea comes as Europe’s largest economy finds itself mired in decline, with the bloc’s evolving body of regulations increasingly being singled out as a hurdle to growth.
Against that backdrop, the European Commission is expected to unveil proposed changes to key ESG legislation in coming weeks. CSRD had been intended to require roughly 50,000 companies to provide data on hundreds of new metrics related to sustainability, with the first disclosures due to be made public this year. Different factions within the EU are now lobbying to reshape the final outcome of the directive.
In addition to CSRD, the so-called omnibus legislation that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said she’ll introduce this year will likely include proposed changes to the EU’s Taxonomy Regulation and to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The latter was adopted last year and exposes companies to new legal risks if they fail to address ESG violations in their value chains.
In the letter addressed to commissioners, C3D said regulations — and CSRD in particular — pose a challenge and have raised “legitimate concerns, particularly from companies transitioning from no ESG accountability to stringent sustainability requirements.” Delaying an auditing requirement and simplifying rules for smaller companies would be helpful, the organization said.
However, “many companies have already made significant progress in aligning with these frameworks,” C3D said. “A moratorium or rollback risks fostering a culture of delay rather than encouraging further adoption.”
The organization’s members said complaints that CSRD, CSDDD and the Taxonomy hurt European competitiveness are overblown and often made by parties that haven’t closely examined the measures. For example, a much-overlooked fact is that companies only have to report on what they consider relevant, or “material,” to their operations.
C3D also asked the EU to toughen some aspects of the requirements. Companies reporting under CSRD should be forced to address unsustainable business practices rather than just disclose them, it said. And it wants non-EU companies to report by 2027, which is two years earlier than the current timeline indicates.
(Updates to add details in final paragraphs.)
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