· 4 min read
Bruno Latour had predicted it: the dividing line of the 21st century will no longer be between left and right, but between the terrestrials — those who accept the limits of the planet — and the off-ground, those who persist in living “as before.” With the CSRD, Europe had nonetheless tried to reconcile the economy with reality: requiring companies to measure their non-financial impacts to anticipate climate and nature-related risks: a true civilizational project.
This is the ambition the Union now risks sabotaging with the Omnibus proposal, adopted on 13 October in a parliamentary committee, only to be rejected in plenary the following week. At stake: exempting nearly 90% of companies from sustainability reporting and 70% from due diligence requirements, by raising the applicability thresholds to 1,000 employees and €450 million in revenue for the CSRD, and to 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion for the CSDDD. To top it all off, the climate transition plan and civil liability mechanisms would disappear: environmental or social harms would once again go unpunished.
This retreat reflects the temporary victory of the “off-ground camp” in Brussels — a coalition ranging from social democrats to the EPP and the far right…
Europe bows under U.S. pressure
We are living through a paradoxical moment. Never has the European Union been so powerful in imposing a single law across an entire continent. And yet never have we been so submissive to an American administration whose values fundamentally differ from ours. ExxonMobil and U.S. lobby groups have carried out a coordinated offensive against the Green Deal — and they are winning, not only politically.
The Commission has multiplied concessions under the guise of a trade agreement with Donald Trump: exemptions from the CSRD’s scope for American companies, asymmetric tariffs, massive hydrocarbon imports, and a general loosening of standards. It is hard to see how Omnibus makes European companies more competitive when the rules no longer have extra-territorial reach.
And the ultimate paradox: France played a major role in sinking this ambition. While it held the pivotal vote in the Council of Ministers to approve, by qualified majority, the objective of reducing Europe’s emissions by 90% by 2040, it chose to defer the decision to the European Council, where unanimity prevails. The Élysée committed a historic mistake by granting a veto to the least ambitious states. Europe, which aspired to be the spearhead of climate diplomacy, will bring no common ambition to the COP.
Transparency emptied of its substance
Defying all economic logic, Omnibus would also make the analysis of the financial effects of climate risks optional. Yet this is precisely what enables investors to measure their exposure to climate risk and protect themselves from negative economic impacts caused by global warming. An absurdity when ISSB standards — already in force in 35 countries — require such transparency. What will apply in Kathmandu will no longer apply in Brussels, as Emmanuel Faber stressed.
By trying to save short-term competitiveness at the cost of dishonor, the European Parliament will end up with both dishonor and a loss of competitiveness, to paraphrase Churchill…
What now?
To look at carbon reporting with the eyes of 2025 means moving beyond old reflexes of distrust toward regulation. Carbon accounting is no longer a bureaucratic constraint: it is becoming the common language of the real economy. Its implementation is unavoidable, necessary, and urgent.
Technological tools — and in particular AI — now make possible what the pioneers of sustainability could only imagine: automating, securing, and clarifying the link between economic activity and environmental impact. We cannot celebrate AI-driven productivity gains while refusing to let it illuminate ecological transition.
This “seamless” integration of climate considerations into business strategy opens the way to durable value creation: more jobs, more resilience, more future. Perhaps this, ultimately, is what Latour meant by “landing”: reconnecting performance with the planet, innovation with life, and giving progress a ground on which to stand.
Despite everything, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining. Six thousand new European companies will be subject, starting in 2027, to a common non-financial standard. We may still hope for a trickle-down effect along supply chains. For example, companies like Nestlé or Danone risk seeing up to 30% of their earnings affected by climate impacts (drought, etc.) on their agricultural producers. For them, it is imperative to involve suppliers in anticipatory and adaptive measures. Across all sectors, forward-looking companies know they will have to impose minimum reporting requirements on their suppliers — whether MEPs like it or not.
If politics submits to climate-skeptic narratives, it falls to economic actors to take up the torch of the energy transition — without ideology or submission.
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