EU Omnibus U-Turn: Four Strategies for Sustainable Business Success

How to turn the EU Omnibus U-turn into a strategic opportunity for sustainability and long-term business success.

In brief

• EU's Omnibus U-turn presents a unique opportunity for organisations to reinforce their commitment to sustainability and enhance strategic value.
• Companies can refocus from mere compliance to building sustainability frameworks that drive long-term resilience and competitive advantage.
• Through insights from sustainability reporting, businesses can deepen collaboration and recommit to ambitious climate goals, ensuring meaningful progress.

The recent EU Omnibus U-turn has created mixed reactions. It seems clear that the EU’s goal is to change the path toward a sustainable future, but not to reduce the ambition for achieving the transition towards this future. This shift creates an opportunity to reinforce the strategic value of sustainability transformation. 

While they want to continue with — and even accelerate — the work they’re doing, many organisations are demonstrating anew the financial viability and the regulatory necessity of a sustainable transition. This raises fundamental questions: Are companies willing and able to channel their available resources on integrating sustainability in their core processes rather than compliance? Will investors prioritise long-term value creation? Will companies remain competitive in an uneven international landscape? These considerations directly impact competitiveness and resilience. And while Omnibus is the most prominent example right now, similar shifts in other jurisdictions could also prompt companies to rethink their approach — this isn’t just a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) story.

I work with many sustainability pioneers who’ve already done the hard yards. They’ve built the business case, secured senior sponsorship, and significantly restructured their operations. The work isn’t finished – of course – but many are further ahead than their competitors and have accepted the short-term costs of that lead because they believed in its long-term value.

As a result, they’ve started to deliver real financial benefits for their organisations – such as products and services aligned to a more sustainable model. They want to go faster, not slower. In a world of intense earnings pressure and geopolitical instability, they’re continuing to champion what they’ve done and what they need to do next.

What forward-looking leaders can do now

While there are challenges ahead, most of the sustainability leaders I know are driven by optimism – their north star has not shifted. So, how can we use that energy to reframe the renewed political debate as an opportunity? Where can we deepen and future-proof the great work that’s being done? And how do we keep moving forward at pace? So together, let's embrace this chance to make meaningful change in the strategic, opportunity focused approach to sustainability across Europe.

Below are four strategic moves to consider:

1. Strengthen the foundations you’ve built on

Many organisations raced to meet the initial CSRD requirements. If that involved ad hoc fixes or loosely defined processes, now is the time to formalise what matters. Use the window to build robust internal architecture for sustainability data, reporting, and assurance. Strengthen your controls. Define clear ownership. Make sustainability information as reliable, traceable and auditable as financial data. These are foundational capabilities that will deliver value, no matter how the regulatory environment evolves.

2. Shift from compliance to confidence

Reporting done well is about much more than compliance. It’s a vehicle for clarity, alignment and internal credibility. Now is the time to elevate your reporting processes, make them more structured and efficient, and focus on what drives insight. The goal is to meet requirements, but to do so in a way that builds stakeholder confidence and supports better strategic decisions.

And leading companies are already making these moves. They’re integrating finance and sustainability teams, assigning ESG controller roles, and embedding governance mechanisms that anticipate future regulation. Again, steps like this enable better business strategy, whatever happens in the regulatory environment.

3. Use reporting to drive resilience and insight

Strong sustainability reporting isn’t about collecting data, it’s about the conversations better data enables. Many of my clients tell me they’re having better cross-functional conversations, discovering new sources of insight, and even changing how they think about risk and opportunity – all because they invested in sustainability reporting and assurance.

So, can you use this moment to revisit your double materiality assessment. What have you learned? What priorities did you identify but not yet act on? Where could deeper collaboration with suppliers, auditors, or partners unlock new value? Treat reporting as a tool for learning, not disclosure.

4. Recommit to your ambition

Many sustainability leaders have initiatives they deprioritised due to bandwidth. Now is the time to revisit them. If CSRD was a catalyst for change, the delay is a chance to step back and make your programme more deliverable. Where can you turn ambition into action by investing in the areas you already know matter – such as pollution, circularity, decarbonisation? These are the places where credibility will be won or lost. The strategic case remains clear. Now it’s about execution.

Fundamentally, the rationale for sustainability transformation has not and will not go away. In many cases, it’s only becoming more urgent. The current pause in regulatory momentum doesn’t undo the long-term direction of travel. It simply changes the conditions under which leaders must operate.

For those who have already committed to sustainable business models, this is a moment to regroup, not retreat. Use it well, and you’ll emerge not just compliant, but more confident – in your direction, your strategy and the benefits it will deliver, to your business and beyond.