European Green Deal
The European Green Deal is the policy framework presented by the European Commission in 2019 with the objective of making the EU climate-neutral by 2050, and it is the origin of a wide range of binding legal acts on climate, environment and sustainability reporting.
The European Green Deal was published on 11 December 2019 as a communication of the European Commission (COM(2019) 640 final). It sets out a growth and transformation strategy intended to make the European Union the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The Green Deal is not itself a piece of legislation and imposes no direct obligations on companies. It is a political framework that defines objectives and triggers an extensive legislative programme covering climate and energy, the circular economy, biodiversity, zero pollution, sustainable mobility, agriculture (Farm to Fork) and the financing of the transition through the sustainable finance rulebook. Legal force arises only through the regulations and directives derived from it.
The central implementing act is the European Climate Law, Regulation (EU) 2021/1119. It makes climate neutrality of the Union by 2050 legally binding and sets an intermediate target of at least a 55 percent net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990. The Fit for 55 package serves to deliver that intermediate target, notably through the reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (Directive (EU) 2023/959, including the new ETS2 for buildings and road transport), the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism CBAM (Regulation (EU) 2023/956) and the Effort Sharing Regulation. A further intermediate target for 2040 was proposed by the Commission in 2025 and has been moving through the legislative process, so any figure used for that horizon should be checked against the law in force.
For compliance and sustainability officers, the company-facing follow-up acts matter most: the Taxonomy Regulation (EU) 2020/852 as a classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities, the CSRD (Directive (EU) 2022/2464) with the ESRS reporting standards, the CSDDD (Directive (EU) 2024/1760) on value chain due diligence, the Deforestation Regulation EUDR (Regulation (EU) 2023/1115) and the Ecodesign Regulation ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) with the digital product passport. Crucially, this body of law has been under revision since the Commission Omnibus package of February 2025: the so-called stop-the-clock Directive (EU) 2025/794 postponed application dates for the CSRD and the CSDDD, and the scope and substance of those rules have been the subject of continued negotiation. Deadlines and thresholds are therefore not static and must be verified against the transposition law actually in force before any implementation decision.
Legal Basis
Communication COM(2019) 640 final (European Green Deal); Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 (European Climate Law); Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (Taxonomy); Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD); Directive (EU) 2024/1760 (CSDDD); Regulation (EU) 2023/956 (CBAM); Directive (EU) 2025/794 (stop-the-clock)
Practical Example
A mechanical engineering company with 900 employees that sources steel from non-EU suppliers wants to know what the Green Deal means in practice for its own compliance work. The sustainability officer translates the policy framework into an applicability matrix: the Climate Law creates no direct addressee obligation, but it drives customer and bank demand for reliable emissions data; CBAM creates reporting duties and, under the definitive regime, certificate obligations for imported steel products; the CSRD creates an ESRS reporting duty whose first reporting year has to be reassessed because of the Omnibus postponements; the EUDR creates due diligence statements for wood-based packaging. She prioritises the topics by legal force and lead time, assigns an owner and a review date to each legal act, and documents explicitly which deadlines are still in the legislative process and therefore have to be tracked every quarter.