22/09/2025
Just as MEPs are locked in frantic last-minute negotiations over the Omnibus file, the pressure from across the Atlantic to curtail the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is dramatically picking up pace. A recent Reuters investigation reveals that ExxonMobil has formally approached the US administration, urging Trump’s political intervention to quash the EU climate law.
What Exxon Is Demanding
- Exxon argues that CSDDD, which obliges companies to address human rights and environmental harms throughout their global supply chains, failing which they face fines of up to 5% of global turnover, will drive businesses out of Europe.
- The company is pushing for not just adjustments to the law, but for its revocation.
- It has also warned that even the recently proposed concessions by the European Commission, intended to make CSDDD “easier” for U.S. firms, are still insufficient.
Why This Matters
The EU-US joint statement foresees the EU to ease certain burdens on U.S. companies and as such it attracted major criticism. This essentially entails the EU renouncing to exercise its regulatory autonomy and carving out a special regime to accommodate US interest in EU policymaking.
The danger isn’t just delaying progress, it’s watering down accountability so severely that the climate and human rights benefits of CSDDD are undermined. The Stakes Are High:
- Weakening CSDDD emboldens companies to play the jurisdiction game: if strong laws exist somewhere, threaten exit or non‐compliance, and demand for more favorable regulation instead.
- It sends a message that economic clout (especially from powerful sectors) can dictate sustainability policy.
- Ultimately, this erodes trust in the EU’s ability to deliver on climate justice, on protecting ecosystems, and on standing up for human rights globally.
Strengthening Democracy Against Fossil Lobbying
This is precisely why initiatives like The Good Lobby’s REBASE initiative, which seeks to make business associations more transparent, representative, and aligned with the public interest, and the Decarb Lobbying Initiative, which mobilises civil society, progressive businesses, and academics to counter fossil-fuel obstructionism, are so crucial. If Europe is serious about its sustainability goals, it must not allow corporate lobbying – whether from within or imported from the U.S. – to weaken transformative legislation like CSDDD. Strengthening democratic accountability in lobbying is the surest way to ensure that laws intended to protect people and the planet are not hollowed out under pressure from entrenched interests.