2025 Forecast: Big Changes for the EU Green Deal - Part 1

Politics moves quickly in the European Union, and this has perhaps never been more true than in 2025. With the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, the election of a center-right parliament, and ongoing geopolitical turbulence, the EU is navigating a dynamic and disrupted world, and legislators are struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

Part 1 of this lookahead will focus on the ongoing omnibus developments and the possible simplification of the deforestation regulation, while Part 2 will focus on extended producer responsibility (EPR) and the impact of the clean industrial deal.

The Omnibus: Simplification or Deregulation?

In June 2024, the EU parliamentary elections upended the progress of the Green Deal. Many liberal environmentalists lost seats, while populist parties from the center-right made significant gains. As a result, the hard-fought progress for sustainability policies and regulations came under threat from pro-business parties that saw those policies as a threat to innovation and a burden on EU competitiveness.

“The EU led the way in green initiatives, then nobody followed,” said Jon McGowan, a Florida-based attorney working on global sustainability law. “Current leadership clearly believes the European Green Deal put them at a disadvantage in the global market.”

Since then, European MEPs have been steadily stripping away elements of the Green Deal. On February 26, 2025, the commission proposed an Omnibus simplification package that would slash reporting requirements for key sustainability regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Among the proposed changes, the CSRD would cover 80% fewer companies for reporting, while the CSDDD would drastically reduce due diligence requirements that were limited to first-tier suppliers.