On Friday May 24, the Council of the European Union definitively adopted the directive on the duty of vigilance which obliges companies and their upstream (supply) and downstream (distribution) partners to be more concerned about their environmental and social impact. . A vote that Dutch MP Lara Wolters, rapporteur of the project, considers “as an important milestone for responsible business conduct and a significant step towards ending the exploitation of people and the planet by corporate cowboys”. Regarding the social aspect, the text points to slavery, child labor and labor exploitation.
When transposing this directive into national law, Member States will have to provide the companies concerned with detailed information on their obligations. They will have to develop an environmental and social risk management plan and obtain contractual guarantees from their partners, to ensure that they comply with it. Member States will also have to designate a supervisory authority responsible for investigating and imposing sanctions on offenders, through public denunciation and fines of up to 5% of their turnover. worldwide net.
A more demanding application
The directive will gradually apply until 2029 to companies which, in the European Union, employ more than 1,000 people and have a global turnover above 450 million euros, as well as to franchises beyond of a certain threshold of turnover and royalties.
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More demanding and broad in its application than the 2017 French law on the duty of vigilance, the directive contributes to “rebalancing the rules of the game” between all companies operating on the European market and “recognizes the essential role of unions (…) in the development of the vigilance plan in companies »welcome the national secretaries of the CFDT Béatrice Lestic and Fabien Guimbretière in a press release.
Conversely, Medef, which already criticized the 2017 law for affecting the competitiveness of French companies, deplores the extension to the entire EU of the duty of vigilance which will cause “adverse operational and financial consequences” for European companies and “distortions of competition with the rest of the world, particularly the United States”.
Ease of recourse
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