Between 2014 and 2019, Dutch businesses [...] entered into government-induced agreements to encourage responsible business practice... These multi-stakeholder, voluntary, sector level Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) agreements have been cornerstones of the Dutch government’s method to incentivize companies to respect human rights and the environment for years, and can be regarded as government-induced multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)... But are they effective?

The present Dutch governments’ coalition agreement agreed to evaluate this policy, which was executed by KIT Institute over the past few months and published in July 2020. The long-awaited evaluation shows that the Dutch policy promoting responsible business conduct by means of RBC agreements is insufficient...

[V]arious agreements lack independent monitoring... Furthermore, there is no clear minimum standard that the agreements must meet... The evaluation also shows that the role of the Dutch government is inadequate...

All in all, the outcomes of the KIT evaluation show great similarity with the outcomes of MSI Integrity’s meta-analysis of MSI’s titled Not Fit-For-Purpose published in July...

Looking ahead, the KIT evaluation recommends the Dutch government to consider introducing legislation that requires compliance with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines. This would address several issues that emerge from the evaluation: legislation gives companies a much stronger incentive to comply with the international normative framework than is currently the case, and it sets a clear standard that applies to all companies...