PARIS (AFP) - France on Friday asked the European Union to suspend “indefinitely” landmark new rules on environmental and human rights supply chain standards, saying they were too burdensome for businesses.
The call comes as Brussels has vowed to make life easier for firms complaining about excessive regulation, as the 27-nation bloc scrambles to revamp its economic competitiveness.
“Our companies need simplification, not additional administrative burdens,” French European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad said on X in announcing the request from Paris.
 He also asked for a review of a second set of reporting rules on corporate sustainability that have come under attack from European business lobby groups.
Brussels worries that the EU is failing to keep up with the United States and facing mounting competition from China amid an array of challenges including low productivity, slow growth, high energy costs and weak investments.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told this week’s gathering of the world’s elites in Davos that Brussels “must make business much easier all across Europe”.
“Too many firms are holding back investment in Europe because of unnecessary red tape,” she said, adding that the European Commission would launch a “far-reaching simplification” – citing the “due diligence” rules France is now asking be suspended.
Under what is known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), large companies are required to identify and address the “adverse human rights and environmental impacts” of their supply chains worldwide.
A group of nine aid and environmental groups including Oxfam France and Bloom denounced Paris’s “irresponsible” call for a delay, which risked “precipitating the unravelling” of legislation necessary to tackle climate and social problems.
“This French position is simply incompatible with the European climate objectives,” the NGOs said.
Approved last March, the CSDDD is one of a series of mammoth laws passed by the bloc in recent years to fight climate change and improve business practices, which are now facing renewed scrutiny.