The article was drafted by Mara Vasileiou & Tasos Koletsas, Associates for Lexology on July 1,2026
On 26 February 2025, the European Commission presented the “Omnibus I” package of proposals, aimed at reducing the administrative burden on businesses, strengthening the competitiveness of the European economy, and simplifying sustainability obligations without abandoning the core objectives of the European Green Deal. Proposal COM(2025) 81 is central to the reform, as it amends the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSRD and CSDDD) and related legislation. For Greek businesses, the package should be read less as a withdrawal from ESG and more as a shift toward a more proportionate, workable and commercially relevant sustainability framework.
Why does the Omnibus matter for Greek businesses?
Experience with the CSRD and CSDDD has shown that sustainability compliance can be costly, complex and resource-intensive, particularly for smaller and mid-sized undertakings. In markets such as Greece, where many businesses operate as suppliers, borrowers, sponsors, contractors or investee companies within larger European value chains, the challenge has not only been formal legal compliance, but also the indirect flow-down of ESG information requests from banks, customers, investors and public or private procurement processes.
According to the Commission, the Omnibus package is expected to deliver administrative relief of more than EUR 6 billion per year, as obligations are concentrated on businesses considered to have the greatest environmental and social impact. In practice, however, the benefit for Greek companies is likely to be relative rather than absolute: lenders, strategic customers, international groups and institutional investors are expected to continue requesting reliable ESG information through financing arrangements, supply-chain policies, investment processes and contractual undertakings.
Key proposed changes to the CSRD
The most significant change concerns the reporting framework applicable to undertakings. The proposed Directive provides that sustainability reporting obligations will apply to undertakings with more than 1,000 employees, provided they also meet the relevant financial criteria. Following the alignment of national laws, the Commission estimates that approximately 80% of companies that were expected to fall within the mandatory CSRD reporting regime will be exempted. The Omnibus proposal also provides that undertakings within the scope of the CSRD should not be able to require companies outside the Directive’s scope to provide sustainability information beyond what is set out in a simplified voluntary reporting standard.
Equally important is the simplification of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), with the aim of focusing on core sustainability indicators and improving proportionality without undermining the quality and comparability of disclosed information. This is particularly relevant for Greek small and medium-sized enterprises, which may not be directly in scope but may still need to respond to ESG questionnaires, onboarding requirements and tender or financing requests from larger counterparties.
The simplification also extends to the EU Taxonomy Regulation, a key tool for assessing the environmental sustainability of economic activities, including through the introduction of materiality criteria. For the Greek market, this remains relevant for bankability and investment appetite in sectors such as energy, infrastructure, real estate, transport, tourism and manufacturing, where access to financing and institutional capital increasingly depends on credible sustainability data.
Proposed recalibration of the CSDDD
The Omnibus proposal provides for the postponement of the Directive’s first application until 2028, a stronger focus of due diligence on direct business partners, the review of indirect business relationships where there are indications of heightened risk, the reduction of the frequency of risk assessments from an annual to a five-year basis, and the narrowing of certain requirements relating to stakeholder engagement and value-chain monitoring. The direction of travel is to move due diligence away from a continuous, highly expansive exercise and toward a more targeted, risk-based and manageable compliance system.
What should Greek businesses do now?
For many companies, the Omnibus represents welcome relief in terms of cost and administrative burden. The practical message for the Greek market, however, is that ESG will remain relevant where it affects financing, procurement, supply-chain access, corporate governance, M&A readiness and investor confidence. Companies should therefore focus on a proportionate ESG baseline: identify which information is actually requested by banks, customers, investors and tendering authorities; assess whether the group or its key counterparties remain in scope; and maintain a practical dataset that can be used consistently across commercial relationships.
This approach is particularly important in transactions and financing. A Greek target, borrower, sponsor or supplier that can provide concise, reliable and decision-useful ESG information is likely to be better placed in due diligence, credit approval, procurement evaluation and negotiations with international counterparties, even where it is not itself subject to full mandatory reporting.
You can read the article on Lexology here: “The EU “Omnibus I” Package: Practical Implications for the Greek Market” – Lexology