Words in Belém, destruction in Brussels

11 November 2025

While in Belém, at COP30, heads of State are gravely explaining that humanity is at a critical juncture and that urgent action is needed to decarbonize our economy and avert disaster, the European Parliament and the Council could adopt two decisions this Thursday, November 13, far from the cameras, that would mark the end of the Green Deal and the surrender of the European Union to Donald Trump, Qatar, and industrial lobbies, with TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil at the forefront. 

The European Parliament’s vote concerns the the Corporate due diligence directive, one of the only legislative tools we have, at the global level, to prevent companies like TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, Shein, or Zara from violating human rights, destroying human lives, and wreaking havoc on the environment. The vote in the Council concerns extending, for another ten years, the exemption from taxes on fossil fuels used by aviation, maritime transport, and fishing. 

Two votes that are senseless from an economic, social, and environmental perspective, and that are dragging Europe into a veritable climate and democratic hell. 

In the European Parliament, an analysis of the 400 amendments tabled before the vote on the Omnibus Directive reveals that the conservative right and the far right are now working together to destroy European environmental ambition, while the liberal right claims to oppose the onslaught of lobbyists, the far right, and the Trump administration by turning European law into a vast empty shell. 

In the Council, the Member states will vote on the revision of the Energy Taxation Directive (ETD). The version proposed by the Danish presidency represents the worst-case scenario: maintaining the tax exemption for the aviation, maritime transport, and fishing sectors until at least 2035. This green light for the most polluting industries would jeopardize Europe’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 90% by 2040. 

The Offensive by TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, Donald Trump, and Qatar Against Due Diligence 

 A Vast Deregulation Undertaking 

Promulgated on June 13, 2024, the European corporate due diligence directive (CS3D) was intended to end the impunity of multinationals responsible for human rights violations and the destruction of the environment and climate. 

On February 26, 2025, the Omnibus Directive unveiled by the European Commission now threatens this entire pillar of the Green Deal by removing the obligation for companies to establish an ambitious civil liability regime, allowing effective access to justice for victims of human rights violations and environmental destruction. and by abandoning the obligation to implement a transition plan compelling companies to align their strategies and operations with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality by 2050. 

Under the guise of “simplification,” the European Commission’s Omnibus proposal foreshadows a vast deregulation undertaking denounced from all sides: 

• On April 24, 2025, French NGOs denounced an “attempt to call into question, under the cover of simplification, entire sections of due diligence.” 

• On May 23, 2025, the European Ombudsman, Teresa Anjinho, opened an investigation following a complaint from eight NGOs denouncing an undemocratic process. 

• On October 9, 2025, Reclaim Finance denounced a process tailor-made for industry lobbyists, revealing that the European Commissioner had not met with a single NGO, while meeting with 36 representatives of businesses and industry lobbyists. 

• On October 13, 2025, the European Trade Union Confederation of the Omnibus Directive to protect workers’ rights. 

• On November 3, 2025, WeAreEurope showed that 6 out of 10 European companies wanted to keep the European Duty of Vigilance Directive in its original form and did not want it weakened by the Omnibus Directive. 

• On November 10, 2025, 50 prominent Christians denounced “a race to the bottom leading to disaster.” 
• On November 10, 2025, more than 100 law professors and lawyers denounced, in a letter sent to the European Parliament and reported by the Financial Times, a potentially illegal procedure that violated the constitutional principles of the European Union. 

But the fossil fuel lobby, long opposed to this European legislation, including companies like TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, took advantage of Donald Trump’s election to the White House to launch a major offensive: 

• On March 12, 2025, Republican Representative Bill Hagerty introduced a bill in the US Congress to prohibit American companies from participating in any foreign sustainability regulations, “including the European Union’s Due Diligence Directive.” 

• Faced with tariff threats from the Trump administration, the member states of the European Union faltered. On May 9, 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, during his first visit to Brussels, advocated for the repeal of the European directive and the signing of a trade agreement with the United States. Ten days later, French President Emmanuel Macron followed suit, announcing to a group of investors that the due diligence directive should be “set aside” in order to “resynchronize” with the United States. 

• On August 21, 2025, during a meeting between Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland, there was another significant retreat: the President of the European Commission pledged to “do everything possible to ensure that the due diligence directive (…) does not impose excessive restrictions on transatlantic trade” and to create an exception for American companies. 

• On October 8, 2025, President Trump wrote to the European Commission reminding it of its commitment to exclude American companies from the scope of the Due Diligence Directive. 

• On October 22, 2025, the offensive continued, with Qatar and the United States, in a joint letter to the 27 member states, demanding that the European Due Diligence Directive be “repealed in its entirety, or its most economically damaging provisions removed.” 

With the potentially illegal Omnibus Directive, the European Commission has thus opened a Pandora’s box, into which the fossil fuel lobby and authoritarian leaders have rushed, risking the destruction of existing European law. 

The Danger of the Omnibus Bill for European Parliamentary Democracy 

It is also European democracy that is at risk, as the Omnibus Bill has encouraged the conservative right to break the “cordon sanitaire” in order to form an alliance with the far right and accede to the demands of lobbyists, who see this legislative process as an unprecedented opportunity to torpedo a pillar of the Green Deal. 

On October 1, 2025, the EPP rapporteur, Jörgen Warborn, explained that he had a “deal” with the far right and threatened his allies in the “von der Leyen majority” with breaking the “cordon sanitaire” to dismantle the duty of vigilance with the far right if the liberal right (Renew/Renaissance) and the socialists (S&D/PS, Place Publique) did not comply with all his demands. 

On the socialist side, many delegations rejected such blackmail and rallied behind the driving force behind the adoption of the European directive on due diligence, the socialist Lara Wolters, who had dedicated seven years of her parliamentary term to this issue. Other delegations, following the line imposed by the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who had reached a tacit agreement three weeks earlier with the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for German conservatives and Spanish socialists to work together in the European Parliament, announced they would submit to Jörgen Warborn’s proposal… 

With a socialist group on the verge of implosion, the liberal right-wing Renew party, the true arbiter within the “von der Leyen majority,” announced on October 8, 2025, through its rapporteur, Pascal Canfin, that it would submit to the EPP’s blackmail, explaining that it had “always aimed for a vote from the von der Leyen coalition on this matter.” 

In a highly charged vote on October 22, 2025, the European Parliament, meeting in plenary session, refused to accept this parliamentary process based on blackmail and demanded a plenary vote on November 13. 

However, an analysis of the 400 amendments tabled before the decisive vote on Thursday, November 13, 2025, reveals that the maneuvering between the conservative right and the far right continues. For example, 30 of the 33 amendments tabled by the conservative right (EPP/The Republicans) are identical, down to the last comma, to those tabled by the far-right ECR group, in which Marion Maréchal Le Pen sits, such as amendments 228 and 287, which propose to undermine corporate climate responsibility. 

On Monday, November 10, Politico revealed that negotiations were ongoing, with the EPP still hesitating, in the final stretch, to carry out its threat by voting with the far right. Jordan Bardella’s far-right group (Patriots for Europe/RN) asserted the union of the right: “The EPP amendments are our amendments.” European parliamentary democracy has thus entered a new era, with the conservative right now officially conducting extensive parliamentary work with the far right. 

And the damage is done: the liberal right and the socialists, fearing that the conservative right might veer towards the far right, are trying at all costs to bring the EPP back into the fold of the “von der Leyen majority” with “compromise” amendments that effectively end the duty of vigilance, transforming this legislation into a mere shell. 

Amendment 258, tabled by Pascal Canfin, proposes a “compromise” amendment on civil liability that reduces a two-page article—comprised of seven paragraphs meticulously drafted and negotiated over five years within the Brussels institutions to guarantee effective access to justice for victims of multinational corporations—to just two short paragraphs, each only two lines long. All provisions intended to ensure effective access to justice are left to the discretion of individual states, foreshadowing a future fragmentation of due diligence into twenty-seven regimes of varying ambition and varying degrees of protection for human rights and the environment. The harmonized European framework is crumbling. 

Amendments 267 and 276, concerning the obligation to implement transition plans, replicate this scenario: companies must now adopt a transition plan and make “reasonable efforts… without having to exhaust all available means.” 

Thus, while this Omnibus Directive is only the first stage of the rocket, with five other Omnibus Directives already in the pipeline, including one on “chemicals” and one on the “environment,” we are witnessing the destruction of corporate due diligence, as well as the environmental ambitions of the Union and of European parliamentary democracy, with an alliance forming between the conservative right and the far right to dismantle European law and hand Europe over to the most ferocious industrial lobbies. 

BLOOM calls for safeguarding European Union law from destruction by rejecting the Omnibus Directive. A clear and unequivocal rejection will allow the Commission, the 27 member states, and the European Parliament to regain their composure before it is too late. 

The danger of the Energy Taxation Directive

On this same November 13th, the EU Council plans to adopt a revision of the Energy Taxation Directive. 

A compromise proposal that maintains tax exemptions for polluting sectors for the next ten years 

In force since 2003, the Energy Taxation Directive sets the tax framework for energy products across the European Union. Deemed obsolete by the European Commission, it proposed in July 2021, as part of the Green Deal, to reform this directive in order to align energy taxation with European climate objectives. The revision aimed in particular to introduce a minimum level of taxation on fossil fuels for three particularly polluting sectors: aviation, maritime transport, and fishing. 

Since tax matters fall under the sovereignty of member states, the European Commission’s proposal was then directly negotiated by the economy and finance ministers of the member states within the Council of the European Union. Parliament, for its part, has only an advisory role in this process. 

Throughout the negotiations, member states have consistently weakened the European Commission’s initial proposal, to the point that today, the text proposed by the Danish presidency, and strongly supported by Germany, extends the tax privileges granted to the aviation, maritime transport, and fishing sectors until at least 2035. However, in its latest report on climate action, the European Commission has just reiterated that member states must implement the planned measures to achieve the emissions reduction target of 55% by 2030. To reach its climate objectives, it is therefore essential that the European Union adopt an ambitious revision of the Energy Taxation Directive. 

An annual shortfall of nearly €50 billion for the 27 member states 

Moreover, and as discussions on the future European Union budget have only just begun, the tax losses for member states are colossal: €21.3 billion per year for aviation, €24 billion for maritime transport, and €1.5 billion for fishing, representing nearly €47 billion in lost public revenue each year, including €3.2 billion per year for France. These are funds that could be invested in the energy transition, clean transport, and regional resilience. 

At the crucial COREPER II meeting on November 5, 2025, faced with disagreements and growing mobilization from civil society, member states failed to reach an agreement on revising the directive before the vote on November 13. 

Eight countries – Germany, Sweden, Lithuania, Ireland, Portugal, Estonia, Slovenia, and Romania – supported the Danish compromise and called for negotiations to be concluded. Others, such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia, opposed it, recalling the European Union’s climate objectives and the weakness of a text that failed to align taxation with the ecological emergency. Thirteen other delegations, including those of France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, expressed reservations, while refusing to exercise a veto. 

A compromise that throws humanity’s future into the flames 

This compromise, if adopted, would lock in the tax exemptions granted to fossil fuels until 2035 and contribute to making it impossible to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction targets of 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2040. 

 This political choice, in total contradiction with the EU’s climate commitments, amounts to a massive subsidy for the most polluting sectors, at the expense of tax fairness and the coherence of the Green Deal. 

In the midst of COP30, the same governments that talk about phasing out fossil fuels and global responsibility abroad are determined to preserve fossil fuel privileges within their own nations, throwing humanity’s future into the flames. 

BLOOM calls on the European Union’s finance ministers to reject the Danish presidency’s proposal by vetoing it in the vote on November 13, and to adopt a directive that finally makes people pay for pollution, in line with the Green Deal, tax fairness and Europe’s international commitments.