On 7 February 2017, the lower house of the Dutch Parliament adopted a law introducing a duty of care to prevent child labour. The “Child Labour Due Diligence Law” requires companies selling goods and services to Dutch end-users to determine whether child labour occurs in their supply chains. If so, companies must set out a plan of action on how to combat it and issue a due diligence statement on their investigation and plan of action.

A first debate was held in the Senate on 19 December 2017, and on 14 May 2019, the Senate voted to adopt the law. According to the MVO Platform, it is now up to the government to elaborate a number of important elements of the Act, in the form of General Administrative Orders - on which the law's effectiveness will partially rest. They have also called for the government to investigate the possibility of broad due diligence legislation. More information is available below.

See here for information on the increasing momentum for broad cross-issue mandatory due diligence legislation in the Netherlands.