Jurist Three-quarters of Europeans back corporate accountability amid EU rollback

[Dadparvar]

Three-quarters of Europeans believe large companies should be held accountable for human rights and environmental violations across their global supply chains, even as the European Union moves to weaken corporate sustainability laws, according to new polling reported Thursday by Amnesty International.

The research, conducted last month by Ipsos, surveyed over 10,000 people across ten European countries and found that three-quarters of respondents believed large companies should be held accountable for human rights violations as well as environmental harm across their global value chains. Additionally, 58 percent of those surveyed asserted that they supported the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which aims to foster responsible and sustainable corporate behaviour by imposing corporate sustainability due diligence rules on companies.

The poll also revealed that over 53 percent of respondents believed the EU should prioritize upholding its own environmental laws and place human rights and environmental protection above corporate profits, especially following the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate mitigation.

Commenting on the findings of the research, the EU Senior Campaigner of Global Witness, an organization that commissioned the survey alongside Amnesty International, Beate Beller, said:

“Europeans are sending Brussels a powerful message of support for urgent climate action and the protection of human rights. The European Union must honour its commitments and resist lobbyists trying to force a race to the bottom. Companies have a critical responsibility to drastically reduce their emissions, and they must be obliged to take action to address the climate crisis now”.

European citizens’ perspectives stand in contrast to the EU’s rollback on environmental and human rights protection, mainly through the Omnibus proposal. Introduced in February 2025, this proposal includes a series of amendments to European sustainability rules intended to reduce regulatory burdens for EU businesses in order to boost their competitiveness. However, human rights organizations and legal scholars criticized the directive, contending that it would undermine European corporate sustainability standards. One of the many concerns is that the proposal weakens corporate climate obligations by requiring businesses to adopt transition plans without a clear mandate for implementation. Additionally, the proposal limits due diligence obligations to direct business partners, raising fears that companies may overlook human rights and environmental risks within their supply chains.

In June, the Council of the EU implemented further measures to simplify sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements for smaller companies, thereby reducing the scope of the CSDDD. The Council also approved the Commission’s proposal to postpone the implementation of the CSDDD by one year and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) by two years.

The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote on its position regarding the Omnibus proposal on October 13.

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