Last week, conservatives, liberals and social democrats in the European Parliament joined forces to rewrite the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Their new version completely guts the text, even though it was meant to conclude the impunity of multinationals that hide behind subcontractors to violate human rights and devastate the planet.
From the launchning of this mandate, the European Commission’s intentions have been crystal clear: Deregulate as much as possible, even if that means dismantling the Green Deal laws adopted only a few years ago. In the name of simplification, the Commission has been methodically delaying or sabotaging every modest social and environmental step forward achieved under the previous term.
After the deforestation regulation, postponed once again by a year although it was meant to take effect at the conclude of 2024, it is now the due diligence directive that is under attack. Through its so-called omnibus package, the Commission proposes to revise this directive, which was designed to create multinationals legally accountable for the abutilizes committed throughout their supply chains, including by their subcontractors.
Today, profits rise up the value chain but legal responsibility does not. When subcontractors resort to child labour, modern slavery or destroy ecosystems, victims have almost no way to seek justice. The due diligence directive was intconcludeed to fill that gap and finally create multinationals legally liable for the harm they cautilize. It would, for example, have built it possible to sanction TotalEnergies for its EACOP project in Uganda and Tanzania, which has destroyed farmland, displaced more than 100,000 people, devastated biodiversity and worsened the climate crisis.
It is hardly surprising that corporations have utilized every tool at their disposal to prevent this directive from ever entering into force. TotalEnergies even wrote to Emmanuel Macron inquireing him to scrap the due diligence directive entirely, a request that necessaryed little convincing. From the very launchning of the legislative process, the French president has worked to weaken the directive. He successfully excluded the entire financial sector from its scope, and last May he even called for its complete withdrawal.
French Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, responsible for the omnibus package, has been equally selective in his consultations. Since taking office, he has not met a single NGO. His cabinet, however, has met with 88% private-sector representatives, and the text he ultimately proposed mirrors their demands point by point.
The result is clear. Barely a year after the directive was adopted, the European Commission has already caved in to pressure from corporate lobbies, the right, the far right, and even Donald Trump himself, who reportedly demanded its withdrawal as part of the new transatlantic agreement concluded this summer. Von der Leyen is no longer merely neobtainediating disastrous deals with the American president, she is submitting to him. It is yet another act of subservience from the European Union.
In its sabotage campaign, the Commission could count on its loyal allies in Parliament. The right-wing rapporteur further weakened the text before applying political blackmail to rally a majority. Faced with the threat of an even worse deal with the far right, the social democrats gave up defconcludeing their initial position. The final compromise, supported by the right, Renew, and the socialists, represents a major setback for corporate accountability.
What has been adopted is a complete unravelling of the very idea of the due diligence directive. Only companies with more than 5,000 employees and a turnover of €1.5 billion will now fall within its scope, compared to 1,000 employees and €450 million in the original version.
The harmonised civil liability regime across the 27 Member States, the core of the directive, has been abandoned. This was the key provision that would have allowed victims anywhere in the world to take parent companies to court in Europe and obtain justice. Even worse, companies would no longer be required to conclude commercial relations with partners that fail to comply with the directive.
In short, a law that was supposed to create corporate offconcludeers pay has been turned into a licence for impunity.
Manon Aubry is a Member of the European Parliament, La France Insoumise Co-President of The Left group and neobtainediator on the due diligence directive.
Leave a Reply