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ECCJ in EUObserver: How Berlin and Paris sold-out the EU corporate due diligence law
A landmark draft EU law that could prevent and compensate victims for harms like land-grabbing, forced labour or oil spills in businesses’ value chains has finally made its way to member states. They have just signed off their preliminary position on the Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) — which will almost certainly make sure this law is dead on arrival.
There are three key elements to making this corporate sustainability due diligence law work, which EU governments have got very badly wrong.
Firstly, access to justice and remedy for victims, which should be at the heart of this kind of law, has become a sideshow. The Council’s position would not offer any help to poor communities, struggling to stand up to a big EU company who stole their land and denied them fair compensation, or workers’ families suing for damages after a deadly factory fire (both real examples).
At best, member states are ignoring victims, and at worst, they are trying to make it even harder for them to get justice.
Germany even tried to mobilise support to turn the due diligence process, designed to prevent human rights violations, into a shield to protect companies from being taken to court. Thankfully this did not gain much traction, but member states have, however, successfully included new hurdles to holding companies liable.
Secondly, even if it were possible to get remedy under the law, it might not matter, as governments pushed to exclude most business relationships from the scope of the law.
Most powerful member states were unified in wanting to cut out the ‘downstream’ part of the value chain (and have largely succeeded).
