Written by Eliza Druta
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Publyon Sustainability Newsletter! 🌱 This edition is packed with the latest EU policy updates you can’t afford to miss, including game-changing shifts in waste rules and sustainability reporting. We also have an exclusive interview with Theo Paquet from the EEB, where we dive into the hot trends shaking up EU agri-policy and what it means for the future of sustainability.
Plus, find out where you can meet the team at upcoming events, and enjoy our monthly blog picks on the EU’s water resilience strategy, packed with fresh insights.
Stay tuned – it’s a must-read! 🌍💚
Europe’s bold plan for sustainable growth, the “Clean Industrial Deal”, represents a major shift for EU businesses, especially in energy-intensive sectors. Don’t miss your chance to engage with the Commission to shape this deal and influence the policy direction for the next five years.
The spotlight
Europe’s competitive edge in jeopardy: simplification amid trade war tensions
The EU is simplifying its rules to boost competitiveness, with key delays in sustainability laws offering businesses a breather. But just as Europe streamlines, a storm brews across the Atlantic. On 3 April, Trump slapped a 20% tariff on all EU exports, escalating trade tensions and threatening industries crucial to Europe’s green future.
Steel, automotive, and green tech are in the crosshairs, facing rising costs and disrupted supply chains. As the EU pushes for easier regulations internally, it now faces a trade war that could derail its climate goals and industrial edge. Can Europe stay competitive in this volatile global landscape? The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Impact analysis for your business
Our free updates keep you informed, but is that enough? With our tailored sustainability updates you’ll receive:
- Custom insights on how upcoming policy changes might impact your business;
- Strategic advice from your dedicated policy consultant on how to turn challenges into opportunities;
- Early warnings about key legislative developments.
Policy updates
ENVI backs sweeping overhaul of EU waste rules with targets for food waste and fast fashion
The European Parliament’s environment committee has backed a major revision of EU waste legislation, introducing new obligations on food waste reduction and fast fashion. The updated directive sets binding targets and extended producer responsibility requirements, with wide-ranging implications for food systems, textile producers and online platforms.
On 18 March, the ENVI committee held a vote on the provisional agreement resulting from the interinstitutional negotiations, which was adopted with 70 votes in favour, 4 against and 9 abstentions. The text reflects a major overhaul of EU waste legislation, introducing binding food waste reduction targets and a new EU-wide extended producer responsibility scheme for textiles. Member States would be obliged to cut food waste by 10 percent in processing and manufacturing and by 30 percent per capita across retail, food services and households, benchmarked against a 2021–2023 reference period.
The directive also requires textile producers, including those selling online, to fund the collection, sorting, reuse and recycling of products they place on the market. Fast fashion is explicitly targeted, with eco-modulation of fees and product design requirements intended to force changes in business models and product longevity. A vote in the European Parliament plenary is pencilled in for 6 October, at second reading.
The directive’s scope is expansive, reaching into consumer education, online platform compliance, fee setting, and export controls. Social economy actors are formally integrated into waste collection systems, and harmonised sorting and end-of-waste rules are expected to follow from the Commission. The Commission is likely to issue further acts on sorting standards, producer registration and fee modulation, which will define the operational burden on industry. With review clauses already set for 2027 and 2035, and signals of further moves on reuse and recycling targets, the directive clearly aims to embed circular economy logic into the internal market.
Sustainability and due diligence: Parliament backs delay to new rules as part of simplification drive
The European Parliament has formally approved a delay to the application of key sustainability and due diligence rules, granting companies additional time to prepare. The move forms part of the Commission’s broader “Omnibus I” package aimed at easing compliance burdens and simplifying EU regulation.
On 03 April, the European Parliament voted to postpone the application of new EU laws on due diligence and sustainability reporting, endorsing the Commission’s proposed delay with 531 votes in favour, 69 against and 17 abstentions. The decision forms part of the broader “Omnibus I” simplification package aimed at easing compliance burdens and improving the competitiveness of EU industry. Under the revised timeline, Member States will have until 26 July 2027 to transpose the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). The first wave of companies, those with over 5,000 employees and turnover above €1.5 billion, will only need to apply the rules from 2028. The same date will now apply to the second wave, including companies with more than 3,000 employees and turnover exceeding €900 million.
Application of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will also be delayed by two years for the second and third waves of companies. Large companies with more than 250 employees will report on their environmental and social impacts in 2028 for the previous financial year. Listed small and medium-sized enterprises will follow in 2029. The Parliament used the urgent procedure to speed up adoption of the proposal, and the Council had already endorsed the same text on 26 March. With this first delay formally adopted, work will now begin in the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee on the second part of the simplification package, which will address changes to the substance and scope of both the due diligence and reporting rules.
Commission presents Action Plan to safeguard EU steel and metals industry
The European Commission has unveiled a new strategy to reinforce the competitiveness and green transition of Europe’s steel and metals sector. The plan combines trade defences, investment support and decarbonisation tools as part of the wider Clean Industrial Deal.
On 19 March, the European Commission unveiled its Action Plan on Steel and Metals, aimed at maintaining industrial capacity while driving decarbonisation across one of Europe’s most strategic sectors. The plan sets out measures to address high energy costs, unfair global competition and the investment gap in green technology. It proposes targeted relief for energy-intensive production through power purchase agreements and reduced network tariffs, as well as support for hydrogen uptake and faster grid access. To prevent carbon leakage, the Commission will publish a new communication in the second quarter on how to shield exports from CBAM distortions and will present a legislative proposal by end-2025 to extend CBAM’s scope and introduce anti-circumvention tools. The plan also confirms that tighter steel safeguard measures will be proposed before the current regime expires in 2026, alongside a review of origin rules to stop trade defence circumvention.
The package is part of the broader Clean Industrial Deal and closely tied to the ReArm Europe initiative launched the same day. It includes up to €100 billion in scale-up financing for industrial decarbonisation, with a €1 billion pilot auction scheduled for later this year, and introduces plans to set recycling targets for steel and aluminium in key value chains. The Commission is also considering trade measures on scrap to ensure local availability for circular production. A key political signal is the integration of labour and transition measures, including active skills policies and oversight by the new Fair Transition Observatory. Backed by President von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President Séjourné, the plan aims to secure the sector’s competitiveness, supply chain resilience and climate alignment at a time of heightened geopolitical and economic pressure. It follows a strategic dialogue held earlier in March and marks the second sectoral industrial plan under the current Commission, following the automotive package presented on 5 March.
Trump’s universal tariffs threaten EU green transition and industrial competitiveness
A sweeping new tariff imposed by US President Donald Trump on all EU exports has triggered a transatlantic trade crisis, with serious implications for Europe’s green industrial strategy. The move raises concerns over inflation, supply chain disruption, and the viability of the EU’s climate and competitiveness objectives.
On 3 April, US President Donald Trump imposed a sweeping 20 percent tariff on all EU exports as part of a broader campaign of universal duties targeting key US trading partners. The move has plunged transatlantic trade relations into crisis and triggered immediate fallout in financial markets. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the measure. In her official statement, she warned that inflation, consumer costs, and business uncertainty will all rise, with vulnerable citizens and strategic EU industries—particularly steel, automotive, and pharmaceuticals—bearing the brunt of the disruption. With the EU’s trade surplus under renewed scrutiny, the risk now is that politically driven tariffs will continue to escalate, compounding volatility across sectors critical to Europe’s green industrial strategy.
The implications for EU competitiveness and sustainability are severe. Higher input costs, disrupted supply chains and retaliatory uncertainty will directly undermine efforts to scale up clean technologies, localise production, and secure the raw materials needed for climate neutrality. Tariffs on steel and aluminium strike at the foundations of Europe’s renewable infrastructure, while supply chain friction threatens the deployment of electric vehicles and energy storage systems. The EU is now facing the dual challenge of preserving its climate objectives while defending economic resilience in an increasingly protectionist global environment.
Expert Interview
A conversation with Theo Paquet
Theo Paquet is Senior Officer for Agriculture at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). The EEB is the largest civil environmental network/NGO in the EU, with over 140 member organisations spread across the EU.
The EEB works on a vast portfolio of environmental issues from energy and climate to farming and sustainable development, from eco-design to chemicals, and from biodiversity to EU governance.
With Theo, we discussed his work at the EEB and the Bureau’s position on key agriculture and sustainability trends, from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the simplification efforts of this mandate.
Can you tell us a little bit about the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and what it stands for?
The EEB is the largest civil environmental network in the EU, with members in 41 countries (both from the EU and neighbouring countries) and around 180 million individual sympathisers who can be part of the organisations or donors. As EEB, we stand for a fairer, more environmentally friendly society, and we advocate for progressive environmental policies.
We are the only NGO in Brussels working on almost all topics and policies related to the environment, except for oceans. Therefore, we work on topics such as biodiversity and agriculture, circular economy, environmental health (related to air, water, and soil pollution), climate, EU governance, economic transition, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and chemicals. In terms of teams working in Brussels, the biggest ones are those working on circular economy and agriculture.
You are a Senior Officer for Agriculture in the EEB. Can you share with us what agriculture policies or initiatives you work on?
I focus mainly on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and, together with my manager, I also work on overarching agriculture topics such as the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture and the Vision for Agriculture and Food. In the team, we also have colleagues working on topics such as climate and agriculture, food systems, and animal welfare.
What is the EEB’s opinion about the current political climate in the European Union, in particular with regard to certain sustainability policies that are now being revised with the goal of simplifying them?
As EEB we are worried about a potential rollback on EU sustainability legislation, for sure. I would say that the current mandate is a different climate to work in, in the sense that priorities have obviously shifted. Economic competitiveness and defence are now at the forefront, but we do not believe that environmental laws should be just left aside. On the contrary, we think they have a role to play to boost European competitiveness, or for our defence, for instance when we talk about food sovereignty, or import dependency for fertilizers and feed.
Indeed it is a harder climate to work in, especially in the European Parliament, and as EEB we are now focusing on advocating to maintain the environmental legislation we have attained in the last mandate and ensuring that it is carried forward.
You mentioned the fact that the climate, especially in the European Parliament, is now completely different. What differences did you see between the last mandate and this new mandate?
As I work on agriculture, I focus my work on the European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI). The AGRI Committee has always been somewhat conservative in its positions. I think that the main difference now is how common it has become to hear Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in that Committee denying climate change, which is very worrying. And in terms of agriculture policies and priorities, I think a shift started already in the past mandate, with MEPs backtracking on legislation such as the Nature Restoration Law. These MEPs are mostly coming from the political parties to the right, which started leaning further towards the right on several climate and environmental legislative files. So now, it is a very different reality. The centrist majority that we were used to seeing in past mandates is still there, but I believe that, on certain policies, it is not a given as much as it was before.
You mentioned you worked on the Vision for Agriculture and Food. Can you tell us what is the opinion of the EEB on this publication?
As EEB we found the Vision disappointing. The fact is that there is nothing concrete inside. The starting point of the Vision was the Strategic Dialogue report, which was considered a historical consensus document, as it was adopted and agreed upon by all major agriculture, environmental and food stakeholders, from the EEB to Copa Cogeca. The Strategic Dialogue report was considered also a good starting point to move away from the polarisation that you see in every sector. It also included recommendations that we as EEB support, including moving away from direct area-based payment, so payments based on the hectares that a farmer has, which generally lead to quite intensive agriculture, which in turn is associated with more pollution, whether it is air, water or soil pollution, depletion of soil in general, and also less animal welfare. So, for the EEB, the Strategic Dialogue was a document that grouped what needed to be done for the sector, while the Vision was supposed to provide solutions for how these would be realised. This is not what happened in reality. There are a couple of things we are worried about concerning the Vision.
Concerning the direct area-based payment, the European Commission used very weak language, so that was very disappointing. The same goes for the issues of pesticides and imports of food products with banned pesticides, as the language used in the final document is significantly weaker than previous leaked versions announced. With regard to environmental measures and payments, it was clearly stated in the Strategic Dialogue report that these payments should increase, to allow more incentives for farmers while moving away from conditionality. This does not appear in the text of the Vision. Moreover, while the Vision mentions the need to respect planetary boundaries, which is good, it does not provide any tools on how to do this practically. Another disappointing point for us concerns diets. There is a need to diversify our protein sources production in Europe, and also protein consumption in general, and in the Vision, there is very little on the fork side of things.
To finish on a positive note, the mention of the dependency on imports for both feed and fertilizers was quite important, as all the feed that we import to raise animals for meat production in Europe is a massive dependency that we have, and, in terms of food sovereignty, is not ideal.
One of the upcoming agriculture legislations expected for this year is the CAP simplification package. What do you expect from this package and what are the EEB recommendations to the European Institutions on this proposal?
I would say that the CAP simplification is a worrying point for us. We already had a CAP simplification last year, which we as EEB were very much against, and we did not support the outcomes, as it significantly reduced ambitions on good environmental practices. For the upcoming simplification package, which is set to be published in May, we are asking the European Commission to not touch the environmental ambitions further.
Our message is not to avoid simplifying the CAP, but rather that the EU can improve the current administrative burdens that are weighing on the farmers by harmonising the various levels through which the CAP gets implemented (from the EU to the local level), by making better use of technology, even just for the administrative systems, and by making more use of satellite data. The current framework for this CAP simplification allows us to do several things: it allows us to increase money allocated to eco-schemes to help farmers make their farms resilient to climate change, and it also allows us to improve the design of these eco-schemes to make better use of them. Therefore, our message is going to be: the EU has tools at its disposal, let’s just focus on making better use of them rather than destroying what we spent seven years building.
And what do you expect from the CAP post-2027?
At this stage, without knowing how the EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) will look like, it is hard to say. But we expect a move away from area-based payments, as we expect less money from the MFF for it. And, if there is less money, it has to be targeted better. The European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen has talked about targeting those payments to farmers that need it the most, but we as the EU, need to develop the tools that allow us to understand who these farmers are, or set up a task force for this, as called by the Strategic Dialogue report. From our side, we will continue to advocate for an increase in funds to incentivise farmers to adopt more agroecological practices.
What are your main interlocutors in the European Union? You already mentioned the European Parliament, and how do you work with them and other key stakeholders here in Brussels?
We address our messages in different ways. Obviously, we address the general public and the EU bubble through means such as social media. Then, when it comes to the European Parliament, in my case I have direct contacts with MEPs working in the AGRI and ENVI (Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety) Committees. We also have direct contacts with the European Commission and relevant Directorate-Generals (DGs). When it comes to the Council, we try to work with our members by having them discuss with national ministries in their respective nations.
Then, as an NGO, we tend to work with other civil society actors who share our values in different types of coalitions, such as the Green 10. This is something we appreciate, especially in the agriculture team, this was further reinforced by the Strategic Dialogue outcomes, where talking with other stakeholders in depth made a huge difference. By talking with each other, you can reach real compromises. This is something we are really focusing on, making sure that we keep the dialogue with other agri-food stakeholders, including as many farmers as possible, open and sustainable in the long term. We saw that it was possible from the Strategic Dialogue experience.
Talking about keeping an open dialogue with stakeholders, this year the European Commission established a European Board on Agriculture and Food (EBAF). Is the EEB part of it, and what do you expect from it?
The EBAF is essentially composed of most of the members of the Strategic Dialogue, therefore the EEB is part of it. The European Commission is currently developing the internal rules of the Board, and the Board already had its first meeting. I believe it is quite good that, after the Strategic Dialogue, there is still the intention between stakeholders and EU institutions to keep the conversation open. I only hope this Board will not transform into another civil dialogue group, where stakeholders will have a full day of meetings in which they only talk at the European Commission. The dialogue between stakeholders must continue, and the Board is an interesting tool that, hopefully, will allow for this kind of exchange to keep going.
Blog
Water Resilience Strategy: everything you need to know
As water scarcity, forest fires, and climate threats rise, the EU’s Water Resilience Strategy in 2025 will reshape the future. Aligned with the Clean Industrial Deal and Circular Economy, it’s a game-changer for businesses.
READ ARTICLE
Events
Find a detailed overview of Brussels’ main sustainability related events that you absolutely should join this month.
- 8 April, Euractiv, Electricity Availability In The EU – Addressing Challenges; Brussels
- 8 April, FoodDrinkEurope, The Future Of Digital Labelling: Building A Unified Eu Approach; Brussels
- 9 April, The Nine and The Green Fix, The Climate Coffee; Brussels
- 9 April, Euractiv, Securing Europe’s biotech future – How can biosecurity drive competitiveness?; Brussels
- 10 April, CEPS, The geopolitics of the Clean Industrial Deal: new guidance for EU energy security and diplomacy; Brussels
- 11 April, CEPS, The green industry transition: Deepening EU-South Korea cooperation in turbulent times; Brussels
