In the early hours of Tuesday, December 9, 2025, the European Parliament and Council completed trilogue negotiations on the Sustainability Omnibus. The outcome dramatically reduces corporate accountability for European companies operating in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—precisely the regions where the EU’s Global Gateway claims to offer a values-based alternative to China’s infrastructure model. This considerable reduction in corporate sustainability and reporting requirements for EU companies directly contradicts Global Gateway’s ‘values-based’ positioning.
The Promise: Double Materiality and Corporate Accountability
In November 2022, the EU Council adopted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), followed by the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in April 2024. These developments marked a significant shift in perspective, highlighting the importance of companies recognising their broader societal responsibilities regarding sustainability.
These directives emphasised ‘double materiality’—requiring companies to report on both how sustainability issues affect their financial performance (financial materiality) and how their activities affect people and the planet (impact materiality). This was particularly crucial for Global Gateway, where European companies would have to account for their impacts on communities in partner countries, not just risks to their own operations.
Why the Scale-Back Happened
The scale-backs resulted from industry pressure citing competitiveness concerns, administrative burden, and political shifts following U.S. deregulation under the Trump administration. The European Parliament’s vote, which relied on far-right support, reduced the number of covered companies from 50,000 to fewer than 5,000—a reduction of over 90%.
The Global Gateway Contradiction
In the current political climate, competitiveness, favourable business environments, and the capacity of European companies to grow and innovate are critical for the EU’s survival as a global power. The Global Gateway itself aims to offer a values-based, sustainable alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) while boosting Europe’s international role, competitiveness, and resilience in a changing geopolitical landscape.
Yet there are dangers posed by a deregulation agenda that leans toward benefiting companies, potentially creating a familiar burden for those affected by the companies’ behaviour. This seemingly pro-Europe agenda threatens to undermine the Global Gateway’s strongest selling point: that it creates strong, mutually beneficial partnerships to foster sustainable development that aligns with EU values.
As noted in the recent European Parliament draft report on Global Gateway, CSOs and Parliamentary Rapporteurs have already raised concerns regarding the Global Gateway’s governance failures, transparency issues, contradictory objectives, and the failure to adapt due diligence processes, among others.
What This Means for Partner Countries
If we consider the rush for Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) and partnership agreements signed in respect of them, the new scale-backs on due diligence could potentially see:
Fewer Companies Subject to Rigorous Due Diligence
The revised CSDDD now applies only to companies with 5,000+ employees and €1.5B+ in revenue, excluding many mid-sized European firms from conducting human rights and environmental due diligence across their value chains. Additionally, the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises are not legally binding, potentially allowing companies to overlook due diligence for profit.
Weakened Accountability in Partner Countries
There will be no mandatory transition plans aligned with the Paris Agreement, and companies won’t need to trace supply chains beyond Tier 1 (direct suppliers). Furthermore, companies can choose to suspend (rather than terminate) relationships with problematic suppliers, reducing pressure on Global Gateway contractors to ensure human rights and environmental standards in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Less Transparency on Project Impacts
The scale-back means that over 80% of companies currently covered will not be included in the scope of the new CSRD rules. Practically, this means that many European companies working on Global Gateway infrastructure projects won’t have to publicly disclose the environmental impacts of projects in partner countries, the human rights impact on local communities, or climate-related effects. It is a well-known fact that the mining industry is rife with human rights abuses, deforestation, and conflict, with the Democratic Republic of Congo (with which the EU has signed a partnership agreement) being a prime example.
Of the 270+ Global Gateway flagship projects worth over €300 billion mobilised to date, the European Commission has not disclosed how many involve companies that will no longer be subject to mandatory due diligence and reporting under the scaled-back directives—a transparency gap that itself raises questions about accountability.
The China Question
The Global Gateway is supposed to be the ‘values-driven’ alternative to China’s Belt and Road. But if EU companies doing Global Gateway projects don’t have to:
- Conduct rigorous human rights due diligence
- Report environmental impacts transparently
- Ensure climate alignment
How does this make the EU any better than China?
By creating a two-tier system for large vs. medium companies in reporting and due diligence, the EU is effectively reducing accountability precisely where the Global Gateway needs to prove it is different.
A Real-World Warning: Zambia’s Environmental Disaster
Currently, a Chinese company, Sino Metals, is responsible for Zambia’s most significant ecological disaster, which occurred in February 2025. Heavy metals from a tailings dam, such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, leached into the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a primary drinking water source. This has caused devastating pollution, affecting drinking water, crops, and fish. Thousands of Zambians face health risks, livelihoods are destroyed, and the compensation paid to affected communities so far has been inadequate.
The EU is supporting Zambia (a country that has also signed a CRM Partnership) in dealing with this crisis. Yet under the scaled-back CSDDD, a European company of similar size would not be required to conduct due diligence to prevent such disasters or to report any public occurrence.
The irony is stark: the EU positions Global Gateway as the responsible alternative, while simultaneously reducing requirements that would prevent European companies from causing the very harms it criticises Chinese companies for inflicting.
What This Means for Development Cooperation
For EU-CORD and our different advocacy areas, these scale-backs mean that the EU:
- Is prioritising competitiveness over Policy Coherence for Development.
- Is choosing to soften enforcement on business over transparency to civil society.
- Is accepting weaker standards in partner countries for European economic benefit.
The Path Forward
The EU cannot have it both ways. It cannot position Global Gateway as a values-based partnership model while simultaneously weakening the mechanisms that would hold European companies accountable to those values in partner countries.
For Global Gateway to maintain credibility, the EU must:
- Make sustainability standards a condition of Global Gateway participation, regardless of company size.
- Ensure transparency by requiring all Global Gateway projects to report on local impacts publicly.
- Strengthen civil society oversight through meaningful participation in project monitoring.
- Walk the talk on Policy Coherence for Development by aligning corporate accountability with development partnerships.
The question facing EU policymakers is simple: Will Global Gateway be defined by its rhetoric or its reality? The answer will determine whether partner countries see it as a genuine alternative—or just another extractive relationship dressed in better marketing.
While the EU says the Global Gateway represents a values-based partnership, these scale-backs reveal a troubling contradiction. The credibility of Europe’s flagship international partnership initiative now hangs in the balance.
