Today marks a pivotal moment in the fight for corporate justice as the European Parliament adopted the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Eleven years after the tragedy of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, the co-legislator endorsed rules requiring businesses to put measures in place to prevent harm to their business operations...

Today’s approval of the CSDDD by the Parliament is not just about EU policy; it’s about honouring these lives and ensuring rules for accountability for corporate impacts on people and the planet. However, the true potential for game-changing progress lies in ensuring those affected people have a voice in crafting solutions during the implementation phase and in the new design of the business...

[D]ue to political gameplay, the law has seen many limitations – including cuts to the downstream part of the chain of activities and the normative scope, namely the number of human rights and environmental prohibitions covered by the law...

Thanks to the Parliament‘s strong position on this issue, the CSDDD will now provide some basic legal safeguards for those seeking justice – including reasonable time limits to file claims, the possibility to be represented in court by mandated trade unions or NGOs and a better-defined framework for seeking evidence necessary to prove their case...

The European Council is expected to adopt the directive before the EU elections, following today’s successful plenary vote of the European Parliament. More concretely, on May 15, EU ambassadors will meet in COREPER to formally approve the text, and on May 24, EU Ministers will give the final political approval during the COMPET Council meeting.

After its publication in the Official Journal (20 days after adoption in the Council), EU member states will have two years to transpose the directive into national law. Then, the timing of when the CSDDD will come into effect will depend on the company’s size.