Out of 343 voters, the text, which is not binding, received 144 votes “for”, none against. But the groups of the senatorial majority, Les Républicains and the Centrist Union, abstained.
The French Senate adopted a motion for an environmental resolution on Thursday to ban products from the forced labor of Uyghurs in China, despite formal reservations from several political groups. A draft regulation is under discussion at European level which would eventually allow Member States to ban the import of products resulting from forced labor, without explicitly targeting China.
For the signatories of the motion for a resolution, “it is too little, too late”, in particular because the States “will themselves have to substantiate their suspicions that a product is the result of forced labour”.
“We would like France and Europe to adopt a position close to that of the United States”, with a reversal of the burden of proof, declared the president of the environmental group, Guillaume Gontard.
Abstention of LRs
The motion for a resolution thus calls on the European Union to revise the draft regulation to “prohibit the import of products made using forced labor and originating, even in part, from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, unless the companies concerned can prove beyond any doubt – and they alone bear the burden of proving it – that their production does not involve forced labour”.
“A way of seeing” which is not shared by LR and centrist senators, even if they support the objective of the motion for a resolution. “In the labyrinth of modern supply chains, eliminating this doubt will be almost impossible,” argued Pascale Gruny (LR).
The communist Fabien Gay for his part considered “problematic” the reference to the American system, noting that the decisions of the United States “are part of a logic of economic war”. His group had nevertheless come out in favor of the motion for a resolution, with two exceptions.
In addition to the environmental group, the text was also voted on by the PS, RDPI groups with a Renaissance majority, Independents and RDSE with a radical majority.
