EU lawmakers seek more ambitious ban on forced labour products
Members of the European Parliament are proposing to extend the scope of a draft EU regulation prohibiting forced labour products from the EU market to key services and to introduce remediation for victims, an approach criticised by conservative and right-wing political groups.
The regulation, proposed by the European Commission in September 2022, seeks to ban all imports and exports of products tainted by human rights abuses through a risk-based approach identifying areas and sectors for investigation.
Under the draft law, national authorities would have to dispose of all products found to be made with forced labour, unless companies can prove that they eliminated forced labour from their supply chains.
The ban is currently being examined by both EU countries and the European Parliament, which will have to adopt a position on the file before entering into negotiations.
In the Parliament, EU lawmakers are working to make the regulation more ambitious than the one tabled by the Commission in terms of scope and remediation, a move supported by several MEPs from the centre and the left, but criticised by conservative and far-right lawmakers.
The rapporteurs leading the work on the file are proposing to broaden the scope of the regulation to cover services involved in the transportation, storage, packaging and distribution of products, where forced labour could take place...