EU slides backwards with draft plans to weaken more environment reporting rules

The European Commission, the EU executive body, will propose ending an EU requirement for individual industrial facilities and livestock farms to have an "environmental management system" (EMS) detailing their actions to reduce pollution and waste, the draft document said.

Instead, a company will be allowed to do one slimmed-down EMS covering all its sites and this will scrap some existing EMS requirements - for example, to disclose the use of hazardous chemicals at facilities.

The proposal would also scrap a requirement for industrial facilities to have a "transformation plan" to align them with climate goals, and livestock and fish farms would no longer have to report their water and energy use.