Tag: EU climate transition plan

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.”