EP Justice Committee’s due diligence proposal: Commentary by Friends of the Earth Europe
"EP Justice Committee’s due diligence proposal: 'A bandage on a broken arm'", 25 April 2023
EU decision makers have failed victims of corporate abuse and have not provided adequate measures to prevent climate destruction in a JURI vote for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
The law designed to hold businesses accountable for the damage they cause to people and planet was published by the European Commission in 2022 and reworked by the European Parliament justice committee (JURI) since then. Despite high hopes after a strong initial draft, their final proposal fails to deliver the necessary access to justice for victims of corporate abuse.
To strengthen victim’s rights, it is crucial that companies have to prove they’ve met their due diligence obligations. Instead, the JURI proposal continues to force victims of corporate abuse to prove that the company failed its due diligence obligations. This has been a major obstacle in court cases against corporations. The new requirement on companies to disclose evidence will not be enough to repair that.
Another obstacle to justice is that parent companies are not automatically liable for subsidiaries that cause harm. In cases like the compensation claim against Shell in the Netherlands for oil spills in Nigeria, it took around 5 years in court to establish that Royal Dutch Shell was responsible for its operations in Nigeria. However, the JURI committee failed to make parent companies automatically liable for their subsidiaries...
And whilst the climate crisis intensifies, the current proposals fall short of delivering a law that serves people and planet.
Even though it includes tougher requirements for corporate climate transition plans, which Friends of the Earth Europe welcomes as a forward step in kickstarting climate due diligence and bringing down corporate climate footprints across the world, it also creates loopholes for companies to argue they do not have to put concrete emission reduction targets in place for 2030 and 2050...
The JURI committee also failed to explicitly enshrine a comprehensive definition of environmental impacts, including climate change. It only refers to these in the annex, risking that some impacts will be excluded from the final legislation.