Legal Affairs Committee of Swiss upper house affirms political will for an indirect counter-proposal to Responsible Business Initiative
[Note: This is an unofficial summary translation by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre of the Swiss Parliament's press release. The original is available in French, German and Italian. See above for more context.]
14 August 2019
Following the Council of States' decision on 12 March 2019 to reject an indirect counter-proposal to the Responsible Business Initiative, the National Council on 13 June 2019 decided to stick to its counter-proposal. The Committee [Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of States] has now decided by 7 votes to 4 with 1 abstention to follow the National Council and thus requests its Council [of States] for the second time to support the indirect counter-proposal.
At its next meeting, the Committee would like to conclude the detailed content discussion of the indirect counter-proposal and submit its proposals to the Council of States in the autumn session. In its press release dated 5 April 2019, the Legal Affairs Committee of the National Council set out a number of principles which, in its view, are important for further discussion and development of the proposal. The Committee will examine these aspects as part of the content discussion. It has already taken note of a comparative legal study by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law on the legal situation in Europe with regard to parent company liability.