TLDR: Voluntary reporting ended the obligation while the scrutiny stayed. The companies that verify their emissions data now keep the buyers, banks, and capital that still check.
Scrutiny outlived the deadline
The European Union’s Omnibus package raised the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive’s threshold (CSRD) to firms above 1,000 employees and €450 million in revenue, which takes roughly 80 per cent of previously covered companies out of mandatory scope. Switzerland is moving the same way: its proposed reporting and due-diligence law would bind only about 100 of the country’s largest companies, those above 1,000 employees and CHF 450 million (≈ €488 million).
When a fixed obligation vanishes, status quo bias and loss aversion (the asymmetry Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky first measured, and that Richard Thaler carried into policy) pull teams toward inaction. Many sustainability leads read a removed deadline as removed risk, and quietly stood down.
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