Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)
EU directive requiring large companies to conduct due diligence on human rights and environmental harm across their value chain, including a climate transition plan obligation.
Directive (EU) 2024/1760 of June 13, 2024, adopted by the Council in May 2024 after hard-fought negotiations over scope. Large companies must identify, prevent and bring to an end human rights and environmental harm caused by their own operations, their subsidiaries and their business partners along the chain of activities. Article 22 adds a transition plan compatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C, to be adopted and put into effect. It reaches actual conduct rather than disclosure alone. Article 29 creates civil liability for breach. For an insurer, the reach runs two ways. It is in scope itself if it crosses the thresholds, but only for its upstream chain: for regulated financial undertakings, the downstream side, meaning clients, stays outside the duty. And it writes companies that are in scope, whose due diligence failures become a source of liability claims. The scope, broad at the outset, was cut back to very large companies (1,000 employees and EUR 450 million worldwide turnover in the 2024 text), and the omnibus package the Commission tabled in February 2025 reopened the timetable, the thresholds and the liability regime.
The Council of the European Union adopted the CSDDD in May 2024, after tense negotiations over its scope. It requires the largest European companies, under a staggered timetable based on size, to adopt a climate transition plan, and exposes them to civil liability for a clear failure of due diligence.
Follow the research
One letter a week. First, the week's underwriting note, when one is published: a dated, argued decision, signed by Paul Bernardski. Then what the observatory published on cyber risk, political risk and insurance. No account, no tracking.
No spam, one-click unsubscribe, no data ever sold.