On 13 November, the European Parliament adopted its final position on the "Omnibus proposal" for a directive concerning certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements. This came five months after the Council of the EU confirmed its negotiating position on the proposal.

We outline the developments leading up to the European Parliament's position in this article, highlighting the key issues and providing details on the next steps in the legislative process.

Lead-up to final EP position

After months of internal discussions, on 13 October 2025, the European Parliament's JURI Committee voted on its draft negotiating position – which aligned with the Council's position on key points – and approved entering into direct trilogue negotiations with the European institutions, without a prior plenary vote.

However, several MEPs challenged the decision on the negotiating process, and on 22 October 2025, a plenary session of the European Parliament narrowly rejected the JURI Committee's mandate to enter into direct trilogue negotiations (318 votes against, 309 in favour). Although the vote was anonymous, opposition clearly came from both left and right, with left-wing parties arguing that the rules in the draft position had been watered down too much and right-wing parties believing this dilution had not gone far enough.

Following this vote, parts of the JURI Committee's draft negotiating position were reopened for discussion. To secure a majority in the plenary session, CSRD and CSDDD obligations were further limited in the final negotiating position.

Details of final EP position

The European Parliament has scaled back its position significantly compared to both the European Commission's proposal (see our February article for more details) and the Council of the EU's negotiating position (see our June article for more details).

Key CSRD-related elements in the final position include:

• Further narrowing down of the CSRD's scope – The Parliament proposes limiting the CSRD requirements to companies with more than 1,750 employees and a net turnover exceeding EUR 450 million. This contrasts with the Council’s threshold of 1,000 employees and EUR 450 million turnover, and the Commission’s proposal of 1,000 employees combined with qualifying as a "large" company.
• No exemption possible for certain "first wave" companies – Unlike the Council, the Parliament does not allow EU member states to exempt “first wave” companies that do not meet the revised CSRD thresholds from reporting obligations for the 2025 and 2026 financial years.
• Value chain cap – The Parliament is in favour of limiting information requests made to value chain actors with fewer than 1,750 employees and a turnover below EUR 450 million, while the Commission and Council propose a threshold of 1,000 employees.
• No time limit for unavailable value chain information – The Parliament wants to remove the three-year time limit on the grace period relating to unavailable value chain information. This time limit currently applies to the "first wave" for financial years 2024 – 2026. Removal would extend the possibility to omit unavailable information indefinitely. Neither the Council’s position nor the Commission’s proposal includes this change.

Key CSDDD elements in the final position include:

• Limitation of the CSDDD's scope – The Parliament aligns with the Council in limiting the CSDDD’s scope to companies with more than 5,000 employees and a net turnover exceeding EUR 1.5 billion. These thresholds are significantly higher than the current thresholds of 1,000 employees and a EUR 450 million turnover, which the Commission wanted to maintain.
• Changes to the due diligence requirements – Based on the scoping-results, a company would have to carry out a further risk-based assessment where it has grounds to believe, on the basis of relevant and verifiable information, that adverse impacts have occurred or may occur. Companies could prioritise direct business partners. This is what the Parliament proposes, whereas the Council and Commission largely limit in-depth due diligence in the chain of activities to direct partners. A company must carry out a further assessment of indirect partners where it has plausible information (Commission) or has, or can be reasonably expected to know of, objective and verifiable information (Council) suggesting adverse impacts have occurred or may occur at that level.
• Abolishment of the climate transition plan obligation – Unlike the Commission and Council, which retain some form of climate transition plan requirement but have both already removed the obligation to "put" such a plan "into effect", the Parliament proposes abolishing this obligation altogether.

While the three institutions differ on the above elements, they largely agree in other areas. These include eliminating mandatory sector-specific sustainability reporting standards, removing any potential future requirement to obtain reasonable assurance over CSRD sustainability statements, and abolishing the EU-wide CSDDD civil liability regime.

Next steps

Trilogue negotiations between the Commission, Council and Parliament started on 18 November 2025, with the institutions aiming to reach a final Omnibus agreement in December 2025.