Will the EU's plan to reduce red tape for businesses negatively impact workers?

Brussels wants to simplify and reduce the administrative burden for businesses in order to improve European competitiveness.

Transcript

00:00To simplify and reduce the administrative burden for companies, this is the approach

00:10that Brussels is proposing to improve European competitiveness.

00:14According to the EU Commission's working plan, the first areas that will be impacted

00:18include important pieces of legislation.

00:21Among them is corporate sustainability due diligence, which ensures companies address

00:26human rights and the environmental impact of their actions.

00:30Taxonomy, which defies the criteria for economic activities to be aligned with a net-zero trajectory,

00:36is also addressed.

00:37There is much at stake.

00:39Without simpler and more cost-effective rules, Europe will keep up losing economic weight.

00:45We must be clear, simplification and enhancing Europe's competitiveness are not ends in itself.

00:53What we are pursuing is to set the right conditions to have more innovation, more business, higher

00:59growth and better jobs in Europe.

01:02Those are important not only to maintain our well-being and social model, but also our

01:08ability to succeed in green and digital transition.

01:14The European Construction Industry Federation welcomed the initiative, but also submitted

01:19a 24-point position paper and warned that the current framework does not make it attractive

01:24for small and medium-sized enterprises to finance sustainable activities.

01:34When it comes to the specific reporting obligations, it is of immense importance to reduce the

01:39complexity of sustainability reporting by reducing the number of data points defined

01:45in the framework of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards.

01:49There are more than 1,100 individual data points that companies have to disclose information

01:56upon.

01:57This is too much and this also affects small and medium-sized enterprises that get those

02:02information as requests from their business partners along the value chain.

02:09While the European Commission's headquarters in Brussels was in closed-door negotiations

02:13with big businesses, a few days ago, dozens of NGOs and interest groups protested outside

02:19the building.

02:22They fear that the simplifications will affect workers' rights and that environmental sustainability

02:27standards will be watered down.

02:30This legislation, again, the workers, the people, it's about the impact that huge multinationals

02:35have on them throughout the globe, in Europe and abroad.

02:39If you listen to the Commission, the only thing they seem to care about is how to make

02:43life easier for business, which we argue is just a fancy way to say how can we make business,

02:49make the planet burn even faster than it currently is.

02:52The European Commission has promised that the proposals will not compromise the green

02:56transition and insists they will make it cheaper.