While European citizens believed their governments were negotiating landmark climate legislation, a secret corporate cabal was systematically dismantling it from within.

 

Leaked documents reveal how eleven multinational corporations—led by Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Koch Industries—coordinated a sophisticated campaign to gut the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Operating under the innocuous-sounding “Competitiveness Roundtable” and facilitated by PR giant Teneo, these companies spent months plotting to eviscerate a law that would have held them accountable for human rights abuses and climate damage across their global supply chains.

 

Their weapon of choice? The magic word “competitiveness”—deployed to justify stripping democratic protections while serving narrow corporate interests. Their success exposes just how fragile European democracy truly is.

 

The Law They Wanted Dead

 

The CSDDD, adopted in June 2024, represented the EU’s boldest attempt at corporate accountability. It would have required large companies operating in Europe to identify and address human rights violations and environmental harm throughout their global operations. Most critically, it mandated climate transition plans aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target and established civil liability, allowing victims to sue corporations for damages.

 

The stakes were enormous. According to Global Witness analysis, companies covered by the original CSDDD were responsible for over 2 billion tonnes of operational CO2 emissions—equivalent to nearly two-thirds of the EU’s total annual emissions. Their supply chain emissions reached 23 billion tonnes. For the first time, fossil fuel giants would face real accountability, not voluntary greenwashing.

 

That’s exactly what terrified them.

 

“Divide and Conquer”—The Secret Playbook

 

The Competitiveness Roundtable began meeting weekly in March 2025, coordinating attacks across all three EU institutions. The 170 pages of leaked internal documents, obtained by Dutch research organization SOMO, reveal a level of organization and strategic planning that goes far beyond typical lobbying.

 

The companies deliberately stayed hidden. If Europeans knew that Chevron and ExxonMobil were working as a coordinated bloc to dismantle climate protections, it might raise uncomfortable questions. Most Roundtable members never publicly opposed the CSDDD. Instead, they let Teneo—a PR firm with deep ties to fossil fuel interests—do the public-facing work while they operated behind closed doors.

 

In the European Parliament, the Roundtable plotted to “ensure the most extreme position” by pushing the center-right European People’s Party to break with centrist allies and “side with the right-wing parties as much as possible.” After months of pressure on leading parliamentarian Jörgen Warborn, the EPP allied with far-right groups in November 2025 to adopt a negotiation mandate that aligned precisely with the Roundtable’s demands: climate obligations deleted, civil liability scrapped, supply chain responsibility gutted.

 

In the European Council, companies divided governments among themselves like colonial territories. TotalEnergies would target France, Belgium, and Denmark. ExxonMobil would handle Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania. Their goal: “divide and conquer” EU member states to delete the climate article entirely.

 

It worked. In June 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron personally intervened in the Council’s political process, leading to what observers described as a dramatic dilution of previously negotiated texts. The leaked documents reveal the Roundtable celebrated Macron’s intervention while dismissing him as a “lame duck” president—useful for their purposes, if politically weak.

 

In the European Commission, the Roundtable plotted to “circumvent” two “stubborn” departments—DG JUST and DG FISMA—that opposed gutting the law. Their strategy involved pressuring Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and relevant Commissioners through “letters from Irish and German business groups” and targeting officials at industry events.

 

Throughout this campaign, Teneo systematically violated EU transparency rules. Eight lobbying meetings during Parliament plenary sessions listed Teneo as the sole attendee, hiding the presence of corporate representatives. Three additional meetings weren’t registered at all.

 

Weaponizing Governments and Manufacturing Consent

 

The Roundtable didn’t limit itself to lobbying Brussels. They orchestrated pressure from multiple governments to create the illusion of broad international concern.

 

The Trump Administration Weapon

 

The Roundtable maintained “close ties” with US diplomats and pushed the administration to “ramp up pressure” on the EU, framing the CSDDD as “a key barrier” to a US-EU free trade agreement. They considered leveraging the EU automotive sector—desperate for relief from Trump’s trade tariffs—to get the CSDDD “as a concession in negotiations on tariffs.”

 

By August 2025, they’d succeeded. The US-EU trade agreement explicitly committed the EU to changing the CSDDD on civil liability, climate transition plans, and extraterritoriality—three of the Roundtable’s top priorities.

 

Third-Country Pressure

 

Third-country pressure was carefully orchestrated to maintain “minimal US visibility.” Chevron and ExxonMobil led efforts to mobilize countries like Qatar to attack the CSDDD, disguising American corporate influence behind other governments. In October 2025, just one day before a crucial European Parliament vote, the governments of Qatar and the United States published a joint open letter demanding the law be repealed or modified.

 

Think Tank Capture

 

The Roundtable paid Brussels-based TEHA Group at least €185,000 to produce a report and host an event on EU competitiveness. Neither the report nor the event disclosed this corporate funding. The report echoed Roundtable positions and questioned the European Commission’s economic impact assessment—exactly as designed. TEHA Group later confirmed funding from ExxonMobil, Koch, Total Energies, Enterprise Mobility, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Santander, while claiming the research remained “independent.”

 

The Roundtable even considered using LinkedIn “dark posts”—ads that aren’t saved to company profiles and leave no public trace—as an “escalation tactic” to spread anti-CSDDD messages.

 

The Damage Done

 

On December 16, 2025, the European Parliament approved the Omnibus I package, finalizing the destruction of the CSDDD.

Climate transition plans—completely deleted. The threshold for coverage raised from 1,000 employees and €450 million turnover to 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion. Civil liability provisions—scrapped. Maximum penalties—reduced from 5% to 3% of annual turnover. Supply chain responsibility—limited to direct suppliers only.

 

The consequences are staggering. According to Global Witness, raising the company threshold exempted nearly 1 billion tons of operational CO2 emissions and 9.4 billion tons of supply chain emissions from any accountability. Fossil fuel companies dodged climate responsibility at precisely the moment we need it most.

 

The gutting also undermines clean technology supply chains. Electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries all depend on responsibly sourced materials. As Global Witness campaigner Beate Beller noted, “Clean tech cannot be ‘clean’ if the raw materials behind it are mined under weakened standards.”

 

Corporate Capture as Existential Threat 

 

This wasn’t lobbying. It was systematic subversion of democratic lawmaking.

 

Academic research confirms the broader pattern. Studies show that corporate lobbying in the EU is increasingly dominated by individual firms rather than industry associations, allowing coordinated campaigns like the Competitiveness Roundtable to operate with devastating effectiveness. Research also demonstrates that affluent interest groups wield disproportionate influence, especially on low-salience technical issues where public attention is limited.

 

The fossil fuel industry has made this a global playbook. Studies of corporate capture in Australia and Canada reveal how oil and gas interests have systematically infiltrated climate policymaking, making governments “more responsive to corporations than their own citizens,” as the Center for American Progress documented in 2023.

 

The “competitiveness” framing is the new greenwashing—corporations claiming deregulation serves the public good while serving only themselves. European policymakers proved “all too eager” to surrender to these demands the moment polluters whispered the magic words.

 

False Solutions, Real Consequences

 

The Competitiveness Roundtable succeeded. The CSDDD is gutted. Climate accountability eliminated. Human rights victims denied justice.

This reveals democracy’s fragility in the face of coordinated corporate power. Eleven companies, meeting weekly, supported by a single PR firm, systematically divided and conquered the entire European Union. They mobilized foreign governments, captured think tanks, violated transparency rules, and manufactured the appearance of broad-based concern—all while staying hidden from public view.

 

Until the EU builds immunity to corporate capture, every climate law will face the same fate. Real competitiveness would mean defending democracy from subversion, not surrendering to Big Oil the moment they invoke economic anxiety.

 

The tools exist to fight back. EU member states still have until July 2028 to implement the CSDDD into national law. They can strengthen provisions on climate transition plans, restore civil liability protections, and expand coverage back to smaller companies. But this requires political courage that proved absent in Brussels.

 

What’s needed now is an EU that excludes fossil fuel interests from climate policymaking, demands full transparency in lobbying, and defends the rights of workers and communities over corporate profits. Anything less is surrender disguised as pragmatism—false solutions masquerading as competitiveness while the climate crisis accelerates and corporate abuses continue unchecked.

 

The Competitiveness Roundtable exposed the con. The question is whether European democracy can survive it.