But Macron’s own liberal political family is having none of it.
Pascal Canfin, an influential French member of European Parliament with Macron’s centrist Renew Europe group said he would not support repealing the law.
“I will defend the revision of the Directive to make it more manageable for companies, just like the French government has done so far in the negotiations — in coherence with the fact that it has already set up a strong due diligence law in 2017,” he told POLITICO in a written statement. “Removing all obligations would create an uneven and fragmented Single Market.”
The CSDDD, which was adopted last term, has been reopened by the EU executive as part of the first omnibus simplification bill, and is currently being negotiated in Parliament and the Council of the EU. The omnibus bill proposes watering down the law, but the window is now wide open for more drastic changes.
While Merz’s own center-right European People’s Party family and the Renew group are keen to simplify the bill, so far it has been only the far right that has vowed to kill it altogether.
The far-right Patriots for Europe said they had long called for the CSDDD to be dropped (along with the entire Green Deal). “How hypocritical it is to see Renew and EPP leaders fighting against texts they created,” said a spokesperson for the group.
