The Nickel Report

On December 14, 2023, the European Parliament and the European Council reached a provisional deal on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D). Initially proposed by the European Commission in February of 2022, the CS3D requires certain companies to account for and mitigate adverse human rights and environmental impacts throughout their supply chains, including both their own operations as well as upstream and downstream activities. In November 2022, the European Council adopted the general approach proposed by the European Commission. Since then, the Council and the European Parliament have negotiated the parameters of the CS3D to reach a provisional agreement. While press releases from the Council, the Parliament, and the Commission all confirm an agreement has been reached, the text of the agreed upon CS3D is not yet publicly available. It is likely to be released in early 2024.

A set of mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting standards, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), are set to enter into force in the European Union (EU) at the end of this year.  These standards were adopted by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, on July 31, 2023 and, barring rejection by the European Parliament or the European Council, will be implemented as part of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) – a fundamental pillar of the broad “EU Green Deal” – which requires mandatory ESG reporting for certain companies that do business in the EU.  This summary provides an overview of who is subject to the CSRD and when, summarizes key information covered under this initial set of standards, highlights technical guidance from the entity that created the standards, and discusses planned future development of additional standards.

On November 28, 2022, the Council of the European Union (EU) formally adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), following the European Parliament’s formal adoption of the directive earlier last month. The CSRD is a broad environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting framework that will impose uniform, mandatory reporting requirements on many companies with European operations, including companies not based in Europe.

Energy industry: is your insurance sufficient to handle a major cyber event? Larry Bracken, Mike Levine and I, Andrea DeField, address this question and more in our recent article for Electric Light & Power, found here.  In the article, we identify three major gaps in cyber insurance that we routinely see when analyzing coverage for energy industry clients. The first major gap is coverage for bodily injury or property damage caused by a cyber event. Most cyber insurance policies exclude coverage for both bodily injury and property damage, even if caused by a cyber event. Meanwhile ...

The EU's Approach to Product Stewardship

While the European Union (EU) does not have any legal principle specific to product stewardship, it has applied the full range of EU environmental law principles to create a comprehensive framework for product stewardship. These principles include the prevention and precautionary principles, sustainability, extended producer responsibility, supply chain responsibility, and corporate social responsibility. In addition, product stewardship is a key instrument in the EU's latest strategic environmental focus areas: the circular economy and the toxic-free environment, two main themes of current EU environmental policy making.

Last October, the European Commission published its Work Programme for 2018. In the environmental area, a prominent topic is the EU initiative with respect to a ‘circular economy.’ This concept involves a transition to a “stronger and more circular economy where resources are used in a more sustainable way.”

The idea is to  "close the loop" of product lifecycles through greater recycling and re-use, so as to realize benefits for both the environment and the economy. Simultaneously, the EU’s circular economy strategy should “extract the maximum value and use from all raw materials, products and waste,” “foster energy savings,” and reduce “Green House Gas emissions.” Accordingly, the Commission’s proposals cover the full lifecycle of products: from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials.