EU Lawmakers Agree to Drastically Curtail ESG Directives (1)

European Union lawmakers agreed to move ahead with major cuts to a set of sustainability directives, after intense pressure from the bloc’s biggest member states.

The EU Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs voted on Monday to have the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) apply only to companies with at least 1,000 employees; for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the threshold will be 5,000. Both directives were originally intended to cover companies with at least 250 employees.

The vote is the culmination of months of lobbying from business groups that argued the directives would hurt European competitiveness. CSDDD, designed ...