European lawmakers are expected on Thursday to back weakening a set of EU environmental and human rights rules, as part of a business-friendly push against red tape that has split parliament.

Parliamentarians in Brussels will vote for amendments to the legislation on corporate sustainability, a landmark law hailed by green and civil society groups but loathed by firms, approved last year.

The changes, which would significantly reduce its scope of application, are likely to pass -- possibly with the support of right and far-right lawmakers, ruffling feathers on the centre and left which see it as an unholy alliance.

"The EPP has refused to move even an inch," Rene Repasi of the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group said of tough negotiations with the centre-right European People's Party (EP

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