A fake consultation on the omnibus ?

The European commission will invite a list of stakeholders on February 5 and 6 for a “consultation” process regarding the simplification of four key legislations of the Green Deal: taxonomy, CSRD, CSDDD, CBAM. I am in favour of simplification of public policy, as long as it means making their delivery easier and is not a smokescreen for deregulation. However, I find the process used so far by the Commission particularly concerning: no impact assessment, no open-to-all consultation process. Yet, these elements belong to the core principles of the Better Law Making and as a result we are not able to have a really fact based debate on how these legislations impact or not the EU competitiveness. Looking at the leaked list of the participants of this ad hoc consultation makes me fear that it will end up as being a fake consultation.

First, many companies which are already implementing CSRD, have already published their first sustainability report, are getting ready to do the same for CSDDD and have publicly supported these legislations, are not around the table. For instance, the large food companies like Nestlé, Ferrero or Unilever which have been very vocal in supporting those legislations have not been invited, yet. It is very hard to understand why.

Second, sustainability investors' coalitions are not around the table either. This is unfortunate because CSRD is a common grammar for investors and companies, which makes it a tool to accelerate the access to capital for companies engaged in their transition towards sustainability. The voice of sustainability investors is therefore key in this debate. Not having them there is a missing part of the political sense of CSRD. In the same spirit, the platform on sustainable finance is not there either, while they could have provided a most welcome technical assistance to the discussion.

Third, none of the start-ups which have developed softwares to simplify the collection of data points and reduce administrative burden for companies are invited. This is very surprising as the innovative solutions proposed by these companies address the very issue at stake of the simplification debate. Not having them around the table prevent the Commission to work with our innovators to simplify the implementation of our legislations.

Four, I can only point out that the oil and gas sector is very well represented in the list of stakeholders. The transition will not happen without them, but a rebalancing of the stakeholders present here seems necessary so that companies with a direct and positive interest in the transition can have a say, and could stir the consultation in a more faithfully representative picture of our EU business community.

Those are four examples of why the consultation process appears as being a fake consultation process. This is worrying and I hope the Commission will use the remaining hours to fix this. This is needed from a business perspective and from a democratic perspective.