Human rights campaigners, climate groups and trade unions gathered in Dublin and Brussels today (Tuesday September 23rd) to alert the public to a dangerous EU ‘race to the bottom’ on environmental and human rights protections as well as workers’ rights. The Dublin action took place outside Leinster House and coincides with a three-day march on the continent that has seen hundreds of people walk from Maastricht to EU headquarters in Brussels.

Over the past year, EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen has led a dramatic row back on hard fought rights supporting people and planet under the guise of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘simplification’. Similarly, the Irish Government’s recently published Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity includes some reasonable steps but unfortunately others signal that crucial human rights and environmental protections may be traded off in the name of ‘competitiveness’.

Campaigners warn of the long-term impacts of this deregulation agenda, including the ‘Omnibus proposal’ unveiled by the European Commission in February – a sweeping package of deregulatory legislation which would significantly water down corporate sustainability laws. This includes the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) – which aims to stamp out human rights abuses and environmental harm by legally obliging large multinational companies to carry out checks in their global activities and supply chains and hold them legally accountable where they fail to do so.

These laws were initially introduced in response to a number of devastating incidents regarding corporate harm worldwide, from the devastation of oil extraction and pollution in the Niger Delta in the 1990s to the deaths of over 1,000 garment workers in the 2013 Rana Plaza Disaster in Bangladesh. European economists have stated that these laws are “a crucial and effective step towards an economy that respects human rights, the environment and the climate, and that frames business activities in a way that is compatible within planetary boundaries.”

While Ireland is on record as opposing parts of this wave of corporate deregulation, campaigners say the Government has largely sat back at EU level while key standards and protections are slashed. In June, the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment said that it is “deeply concerned that the Omnibus proposals extend far beyond the simplification of burdensome regulations for small and medium enterprises and instead severely weaken the obligations of very large companies to undertake due diligence throughout their supply chain.”

At UN level, corporate accountability rules and principles were drawn up, which the EU pledged to reflect in law. However, amid the backdrop of Trump’s tariffs and a political shift to the right, the EU Commission is rolling them back.

Campaigners who took part in today’s action are from member organisations of the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights – a coalition of civil society organisations, trade unions and academic experts, including Christian Aid Ireland, Trócaire, Oxfam Ireland, Friends of the Earth Ireland, ActionAid Ireland and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). The coalition campaigns for greater corporate accountability laws, including the CSDDD.

Speaking outside Leinster House, Evie Clarke, Policy Coordinator for the Irish Coalition for Business & Human Rights said: “What’s being sold to the public as ‘simplification’ is, in reality, a sweeping dismantling of hard-won protections for people and planet.  These deregulatory proposals we are seeing are being driven by the European Commission behind closed doors, bypass democratic scrutiny and threaten to gut vital laws on human rights, workers’ rights, and environmental protections. We are witnessing a dangerous race to the bottom by the EU — one that serves the interests of the world’s biggest corporations, and the consequences for workers, communities, and the environment will be devastating. The Irish government simply cannot sit back and accept it.”

Siobhan Curran, Head of Policy and Advocacy at Trócaire said: “The wave of deregulation coming from Brussels threatens to worsen the attacks on human rights and the environment that we already see in the communities where we work. It also gives a free pass to big investors to keep on fuelling the climate crisis: our research with ActionAid showed that over €31 billion were invested in fossil fuel companies by Irish-based investors as of June 2024. We need strong laws to regulate investment activities to stop huge companies profiting from harming people and the planet.”

Karol Balfe, CEO of ActionAid Ireland added: “This EU wide-sweeping deregulation will not only undermine human rights and climate protections, but it will also let the financial sector entirely off the hook. There was some hope that over time, EU directives like the CSDDD would address the need for banks, insurers and investment firms to take account of human rights and climate action in their loans, investments, and insurance. The Omnibus proposal allows the financial sector to shirk any responsibilities. This rollback is particularly dangerous in light of research by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire which exposed the staggering scale of harmful finance coming from the financial sector in Ireland. As of June 2024, Irish-based subsidiaries of investment companies held €31.76 billion ($34 billion) in largely new fossil fuel investments.”

Seán McLoughlin, Climate Policy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth Ireland said: “We are witnessing a dangerous race to the bottom where powerful corporations are rewriting the rules to protect their profits at the expense of people and the planet. The data centre boom in Ireland is a prime example – devouring clean energy, driving up emissions, and locking us into fossil-fuel dependency. The reality is we need more and stronger EU regulation not less – recent reports revealed that Microsoft used its Irish data centres to store millions of intercepted calls from Palestinians to aid military surveillance operations. If the EU guts laws like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, it will give these same corporations a licence to ignore human rights and climate action with impunity. Claims that this is about removing ‘red tape’ are not backed up by reality.

“Ireland has a proud record of championing the protection and promotion of rights set out in the EU Charter and international human rights law. We are calling on the Irish Government to ensure these standards and rights that protect communities, nature and future generations, are upheld in the Corporate Sustainability Directive and other relevant EU laws.”