Tag: corporate sustainability due diligence directive

Cooley Alert: EU Adopts Mandatory Rules on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence

In late April, the European Parliament voted to adopt the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which will apply to EU companies and to non-EU companies with activities in the EU that meet specified thresholds.  A discussed in this new Cooley Alert, EU Adopts Mandatory Rules on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence That Will Apply to Many US Companies, from Cooley’s International ESG and Sustainability Advisory team, the CSDDD could turn out to be a “heavy lift” for many in-scope companies: the new law will mandate, for the first time, comprehensive “human rights and environmental due diligence obligations, with significant financial penalties and civil liability for companies that do not fully comply,” as well as new requirements for companies “to adopt and put into effect a climate transition plan” and “to report on their due diligence processes.”  As the Alert observes, these requirements “reframe existing international soft laws”—UN Guiding Principles and OECD guidelines—as  “mandatory obligations.”

New Cooley Alert: “Comparing the SEC Climate Rules to California, EU and ISSB Disclosure Frameworks”

If you’ve been following the developments in climate disclosure regulation, you know that many U.S. companies may well be subject to disclosure regulations beyond those of the SEC; regulations adopted in the European Union, countries outside the EU and in some states, such as California, could be applicable. And some aspects of those regulations are more sweeping—or just different—than those recently adopted by the SEC. For example, the EU employs the concept of “double materiality,” meaning the impacts of companies’ “business on the environment and society irrespective of the positive or negative effect of such impacts on companies’ financials”; by contrast, the SEC looks at materiality from the perspective of the reasonable investor making investment or voting decisions. In light of these and other differences, companies may face challenges in attempting to implement all of the applicable rules.  This essential new Cooley Alert, Comparing the SEC Climate Rules to California, EU and ISSB Disclosure Frameworks, from our ESG group provides some welcome guidance in sorting through the requirements of the different frameworks.