Human rights due diligence will become an EU-wide legal obligation - and it is stronger than meets the eye ✨
Yesterday, the European Parliament voted on its position on the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (the EU CSDDD) (See my LinkedIn posts for further detail on the vote and what happened.)
Yes, the outcome came as a disappointment. Many are focused today on the implications of the EPP-far right alliance. The signification reduction in scope. The removal of the climate transition plan and the EU-wide civil liability.
I want to focus today on what remains👇
Human rights due diligence is bound to become an EU legal duty
It will be risk-based - grounded in risks to people and planet, not risks to business (although Article 8 still needs some work!)
It will include looking at the human rights impacts of environmental impacts, and just transition-related impacts
It will require companies to take meaningful action to mitigate their risks
It will require stakeholder engagement and remedy
The core is there. Now we need to bring it to life, drawing on the depth of soft law thinking that has guided the field for years 🌍
My takeaway from this political back-and-forth is that we need to:
🔹 Articulate more clearly why human rights due diligence is a business advantage, whether or not a company sits within scope
🔹 Support companies to apply a genuinely useful risk-based approach, and ensure they can access the information needed to do so
🔹 Strengthen the meaningfulness of mitigation, stakeholder engagement, collective action, tracking and remedy
🔹 Bring long-term thinking into the conversation to counter narratives focused solely on short-term cost
Do you agree? What do you see as priorities for our field ahead?
PS: On days like this, I think of John Ruggie and how his eyes would sparkle when talking about legalising the corporate responsibility to respect. I’m carrying his book with me today as a reminder of how far we’ve come from when there was no framework on business and human rights👇
Anna 🌍💫
