The European Parliament recently passed the 'Time-Out' directive with an overwhelming majority (531 votes in favor, 69 against), delaying the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). This decision is part of the Comprehensive Act released by the European Commission on February 26, aimed at significantly reducing the reporting and regulatory compliance burden on businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. The EU's adjustment to ESG rules centers around the Comprehensive Act, primarily simplifying the requirements of CSRD and CSDDD. Measures include narrowing the scope of affected companies, postponing reporting deadlines, simplifying templates, reducing data points for disclosure, simplifying due diligence requirements, abolishing reasonable assurance standards, and lowering compliance costs. On February 26, the European Commission officially submitted the legislative proposal for the Comprehensive Act. This revision involves multiple key regulations, including CSRD, the EU Taxonomy, CSDDD, and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. CSRD is a crucial regulation by the EU to enhance transparency and standardization of corporate sustainability reporting. After the revision, CSRD will only apply to companies with more than 1000 employees and net turnover exceeding €50 million. This is estimated to exempt about 80% of previously applicable companies from reporting obligations, meaning many small and medium-sized listed companies that were previously required to report will no longer be subject to CSRD. Additionally, under the 'Time-Out' directive, the compliance deadline for companies that have not yet started reporting is extended by two years, meaning the second and third batches of companies will have their reporting obligations delayed by two years. The verification standards are relaxed, and the requirement for companies to transition from 'limited assurance' to 'reasonable assurance' is abolished. CSDDD requires companies to identify, prevent, and mitigate adverse impacts on human rights and the environment arising from their operations and value chains. Previously, it applied to companies with over 500 employees, requiring them to conduct due diligence across their entire value chain, including upstream suppliers and downstream customers, and monitor its effectiveness annually. After the revision, CSDDD only requires companies to perform full due diligence on direct business partners unless they have reasonable information indicating adverse impacts downstream in the value chain. In other words, indirect partners will only initiate due diligence procedures if there is credible evidence of negative impacts. Regarding monitoring frequency, the frequency of due diligence effectiveness monitoring is adjusted from once a year to once every five years, significantly reducing the compliance burden on businesses. In terms of mechanism optimization, uniform due diligence standards are established across member states. If a company obtains new evidence indicating that previous assessments were inaccurate, it must conduct a temporary assessment within 90 days and update the due diligence report. For the regulatory side, this revision aims to simplify the disclosure requirements and regulatory processes for companies covered by the original directives. Specifically, it targets reducing the scope of information disclosure to companies with significant environmental and social impacts while slowing down the disclosure, due diligence process, and urgency for all companies, aiming to improve the quality of implementing sustainable development strategies on the premise of efficiency. Behind the seemingly 'slowing down' or 'loosening' Comprehensive Act lies the EU's effort to ensure a better business environment and the feasibility of its sustainable development strategy.