CIDSE statement
CIDSE and its member organisations welcome the positive outcome of today’s plenary vote in the European Parliament on the CSDDD and encourage Member States to go beyond the final text in transposition and implementation
Today, on the 11th anniversary of the Rana Plaza’s collapse, the European Parliament took a step forward and voted to adopt the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). With this vote, the EU Institutions are about to see the end of a long round of negotiations for corporate accountability.
While the final text is weaker than the compromise agreed during the December trialogue, its importance should not be ignored, as it is a crucial step for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.
The text will soon move to the Council for its final vote and adoption. Once it is published in the Official Journal of the EU, it will enter into force twenty working days after publication.
CIDSE and its member organisations believe that the transposition of the Directive into the national legal frameworks of Member States and its subsequent implementation will be the opportunity to go beyond the final text, to amend what has been watered down during the process and to adopt provisions that ensure the protection of people and our common home.
CIDSE encourages Member States to consider downstream activities such as product disposal (including dismantling and recycling, composting, and landfilling) in the supply chain subject to due diligence and the inclusion of high-risk sectors.
“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”
Pope Francis, Laudato Si’
Additional reading
“El Parlamento Europeo alumbra una directiva descafeinada de diligencia debida“, interview with CIDSE Corporate Power Policy officer, Susana Hernandez in Alfa y Omega, 25 April 2024 (Spanish only).
CIDSE contact: Susana Hernandez, Corporate Power Policy officer (hernandez(at)cidse.org)
Cover photo: Justice is Everybody’s Business Rana Plaza Commemoration to remember the lives lost in the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013. Strasbourg, 23 April 2024. Credit: Abdesslam Mirdass, Friends of the Earth Europe