CSDDD scope narrowed, data hub expands
After an Omnibus I revision weakened the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, a civil-society data hub says it now covers about 1,400 corporate groups that remain inside the reduced scope. The update shows monitoring infrastructure is reorganising even as formal obligations shrink. (duurzaam-ondernemen.nl)
A civil-society tracker says the European Union’s pared-back supply-chain law now covers about 1,400 corporate groups after the bloc narrowed the rule in early 2026. (business-humanrights.org) The law is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to identify, prevent, mitigate and remedy human-rights and environmental harms in their operations, subsidiaries and value chains. The European Commission says the revised version applies from July 2029 to European Union companies with more than 5,000 employees and more than €1.5 billion in net turnover, and to non-European Union companies generating more than €1.5 billion in European Union turnover. (ec.europa.eu) SOMO, the Dutch Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, said on April 14 that its updated Datahub identifies 2,907 companies meeting those thresholds, grouped into 1,447 corporate groups. About one-third of those groups are headquartered outside the European Union, according to the update republished by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. (business-humanrights.org) The count is sharply below SOMO’s earlier estimate under the 2024 version of the directive. When SOMO launched the first Datahub in February 2025, it said roughly 7,000 companies fell inside the thresholds, but those mapped to 4,280 corporate groups, including just under 3,400 based in the European Union. (somo.nl) The threshold change came through the European Union’s “Omnibus I” simplification drive. The Commission proposed the package on February 26, 2025 as part of a competitiveness agenda, and the Council gave final approval on February 24, 2026. (ec.europa.eu) (consilium.europa.eu) Under the final Omnibus I text, the Council said the due-diligence directive’s scope was narrowed to companies with more than 5,000 employees and more than €1.5 billion in net turnover. The same Council statement said the changes were meant to reduce burdens and limit “trickle-down” effects on smaller companies. (consilium.europa.eu) SOMO’s update shows the monitoring effort has not shrunk with the legal scope. Germany has 280 covered corporate groups, France 153, Italy 85 and the Netherlands 77, while the United States leads non-European Union countries with 182, ahead of the United Kingdom with 69, Japan with 51 and Switzerland with 47. (business-humanrights.org) The sector mix is concentrated in heavy parts of the economy. SOMO said more than one-fifth of the covered corporations operate in manufacturing, followed by wholesale and retail at 13 percent and services at 8 percent. (business-humanrights.org) The Commission has defended the wider simplification package as a way to cut compliance costs while keeping the framework focused on the biggest companies with the largest environmental and market footprint. Critics, including SOMO and allied campaign groups, have said the narrower thresholds leave far fewer companies directly bound by the rule. (ec.europa.eu) (somo.nl) For workers, unions, communities and journalists trying to see who still falls inside the law, the practical question is now less about how broad the directive is than which parent groups remain on the list. That is the gap SOMO’s revised Datahub is trying to fill as the July 2029 compliance date approaches. (somo.nl) (ec.europa.eu)
