Austrian trade and industry bodies call for Green Deal reversal

Austria’s leading trade and industry bodies have called on European Commission top brass to revisit a swathe environmental laws adopted under the flagship Green Deal of president von der Leyen’s first EU executive, in letters seen by Euronews.

The Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) was welcomed by unions and green groups last year after a fraught debate among governments and EU legislators, and requires businesses operating in Europe to demonstrate there is no environmental or human rights violations in their supply chains outside the EU.

The CSDDD “must either be significantly simplified or dismissed altogether”, the head of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, said in a letter to economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, dated 6 February and co-signed by the Federation of Austrian Industries.

Hattmansdorfer is currently leading fractious coalition talks for the Austrian People’s Party, which came second to the far-right Freedom Party in general elections last September, and has even been tipped as its next leader.

“In order to maintain competitiveness, we see a further urgent need for simplification in numerous legal acts of the Green Deal,” he wrote, specifying an incoming border tax (CBAM) based on the carbon footprint of a range of imported goods and the Deforestation Regulation – already delayed in a process spearheaded by Vienna.

The list continued with a law banning products linked to forced labour from the EU market, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Direct designed to stem a rising tide disposable trash, plastic in particular, and a regulation on ecodesign intended to ensure products are more durable, recyclable and energy efficient.

“Bureaucracy has reached proportions that can no longer be tolerated,” Hattmannsdorfer said in a statement on Tuesday (11 February).

His joint letter followed an invitation-only discussion of the first omnibus proposal last week, dubbed a ‘simplification roundtable’ and slammed by unions and civil society groups who saw it as heavily skewed in favour of big business.

A similar letter was addressed to the Commission’s vice-president in charge of industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, demanding that reporting obligations under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires firms to publish details of their direct impact on the environment and society, should be “significantly reduced”.

Moreover, an EU list of investment areas deemed sustainable under EU law – with important ramifications for access to financial and policy support – should be “urgently scrutinised” and aligned with “important markets in the US, UK and Asia”, Séjourné is told.

Insurers joined the chorus today, also calling on Dombrovskis and Séjourné to revisit the CSDDD as the EU’s executive arm makes good today on president von der Leyen’s promise last week of a “whole fleet of omnibuses” – a reference to a series of forthcoming anti-red tape packages.

New Commission Work Programme

In line with earlier leaks, the 2025 work programme published by the Commission today lists three omnibus packages to come out before the summer, with the sustainability package due on 26 February to be followed by reviews of rules on investments and mid-cap companies – a yet to be defined category larger than SMEs that is set to enjoy wide exemptions from reporting obligations.

The industry association Insurance Europe said requirements need to be simplified and based only on a streamlined sustainability reporting directive. “On CSRD, all work to develop new additional sector specific reporting should stop,” director general Thea Utoft Hoj Jensen said in a letter to the commissioners.

“Current transitional relief should be extended until there is clarity on how such reporting can work in practice, allowing companies to delay reporting on certain elements, including on their value chain,” Jensen wrote. The taxonomy, they said, is “not proving useful for insurers’ investment decisions”, she added.

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‘Unnecessary bureaucracy’

Large parts of the European business community, including leading lobby groups in Brussels, are seizing on the second von der Leyen presidency’s refocus away from the Green Deal to enhancing competitiveness on the global stage, with the support of conservative lawmakers in the European Parliament.

“We must preserve the core of the Green Deal, in particular the climate targets, but unfortunately there is far too much unnecessary bureaucracy and this must be removed,” the Europe People’s Party environment policy lead Peter Liese said today.

Patrick ten Brink, secretary general of the European Environmental Bureau urged the EU to “resist the siren song of deregulation”, but warned that the 2025 work programme drew into question von der Leyen’s promise to “stay the course” on the Green Deal.

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“While the Commission reaffirms its commitment, it is deprioritising the very goals where the most effort is still needed — particularly the Zero Pollution ambition,” ten Brink said.

Alongside the first omnibus proposal, the Commission plans to publish its flagship Clean Industrial Deal, intended to combine renewed growth and competitiveness with increased sustainability, and an action plan to reduce energy costs.