Abstract:

This article examines the juridification of ESG frameworks in European Union law with reference to two key instruments: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, Directive (EU) 2022/2464) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD, Directive (EU) 2024/1760). The central claim is that ESG is no longer primarily a programmatic managerial standard; it is increasingly becoming a regulatory category embedded in the core of public economic law and environmental protection law. The CSRD reconfigures reporting as an instrument of compelled transparency: it requires undertakings to identify risks and impacts systematically and to disclose the results of that self-assessment through comparable and verifiable disclosures. The CSDDD complements this model by establishing substantive due diligence obligations across the ‘chain of activities’, linking environmental protection and human rights to accountability and oversight mechanisms. Taken together, these instruments constitute a coherent regulatory regime based on the coupling of information, preventive procedures and enforceability. The regime shifts the protection of public goods upstream to planning and risk management, while also generating tensions related to proportionality and the risk of formalised, box-ticking compliance.