Ahead of the European Union vote on whether to adopt the Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), ICAR, joined by 69 other partner organizations around the world, sent the following letter urging European countries to vote in favor of a strong due diligence directive. The letter was directed to the embassies of the following European countries:

• Germany
• Cyprus
• Malta
• Sweden
• Finland
• Luxembourg
• Bulgaria
• Lithuania

[...]

The undersigned organizations are writing to urge your government to vote in favor of a strong Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) before the upcoming European Union elections. Within Europe, the CSDDD enjoys significant support from the public, businesses, church groups, academics and international institutions like the OECD, the ILO, and OHCHR. The undersigned organizations work primarily outside of Europe, but nonetheless have a vested interest in the passage of a strong Due Diligence Directive.

The CSDDD would have significant positive impacts on businesses that operate in the jurisdictions where we work. As it is currently structured, the CSDDD would apply to a large number of companies that are either headquartered outside of Europe (but nonetheless conduct a sufficient amount of business in Europe to be covered by the Directive), or that are headquartered in Europe but do a significant amount of business outside of Europe. This is an excellent feature of the Directive and would mean that companies across a variety of jurisdictions would need to undertake critical human rights and environmental due diligence. The Directive provides a real opportunity to transform the way European supply chains and the supply chains of goods headed to Europe operate, making them more humane and environmentally sustainable.

This is especially important given that enacting the CSDDD would put Europe way out front in the effort to eliminate human rights abuses, labor rights abuses, and environmental destruction that result from corporate misconduct. The model that Europe has developed domestically—starting with the French Duty of Vigilance law and proliferating from there—has gained traction around the world. Civil society organizations like ours have developed or are exploring domestic legislation in our own jurisdictions that take their cue from this model. If Europe were to abandon this effort now, or take steps to dramatically weaken the Directive, this would send a signal to other jurisdictions that, even in Europe, legislation that enhances supply chains is too difficult to pass. While we would strongly disagree, the damage to the momentum created around the world in the wake of the effort to enact the CSDDD could be enormous...