Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

On February 26, the European Union’s (EU’s) European Commission issued its “Omnibus I” proposal to “recalibrate” the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), by reducing reporting requirements and excluding smaller entities.  The CSRD was adopted in November 2022 and took effect in January 2023 (I wrote about it HERE), providing reporting requirements that are being phased in during 2024-2028. CSRD superseded and narrowed the EU’s previous Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD; which I discussed HERE). The remainder of this note discusses the proposed changes. 

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Tags: CSRD, ESG, Hazardous Material, RegulatoryUpdates, Risk Management, Sustainability Reporting, EU Regulations, Sustainability Strategy, Corporate Sustainability, EU Compliance

Many regulatory laws provide for civil – and sometimes even criminal – penalties for noncompliance. Statutes set penalty levels (“XXX dollars per day of violation” for example), at levels intended to provide meaningful deterrence and punishment for noncompliance. But over time, these penalties' stings decline with inflation. To counteract the possibility that less painful penalties reduce incentives for compliance, U.S. law directs most federal agencies to make annual “cost of living” adjustments to the maximum statutory civil penalty levels (there are no provisions for standing periodic adjustments to criminal penalties). 

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Tags: OSHA, EPA, regulatory registers, RegulatoryUpdates, EnviromentalCompliance, EHSCompliance