Murdered for protecting their land, rights and environment; this was the fate of at least 146 people around the world in 2024. In 2021, 245 textile workers lost their lives to workplace accidents. Every year, over 2,000 people are killed in mining accidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone. This is the reality of our globalised production chains. Behind the products on our shelves lie environmental destruction, worker repression, human rights abuses, and huge threats to people’s lives and livelihoods.
This painful reality is distressing to the majority of Irish people. Yet while we might try to make more sustainable purchases with the limited information available to us, we know that our means are limited. It is the companies that make and import these products that have the greatest ability, and the greatest responsibility, to tackle abuses in their supply chains. To date, voluntary initiatives have not solved the main problems; we need laws to make companies accountable. Aware of the power of corporate accountability laws to bring about change, thousands of Irish people mobilised to support the EU’s Business and Human Rights law (known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive or CSDDD in Brussels-speak). Their engagement with MEPs and government ministers over many months helped win crucial votes that passed the Business and Human Rights Directive into EU law in 2023.
The EU Business and Human Rights Law required big businesses with over 1000 employees to investigate their supply chains, identify risks of environmental and human rights abuses, and take steps to stop them occurring. It required them to engage with stakeholders along their supply chain so that they are aware of potential problems and the best way to resolve them. It also obliged these very large companies to put in place a climate transition plan, acknowledging the responsibility of companies to address the huge contribution they make to the climate crisis. While the Business and Human Rights law could have done more (the original idea was for these requirements to apply to all companies with over 500 employees), it was a major step forward.
Yet in the space of two short years, the EU has gone from leading in corporate accountability to undermining it. The balance of power in the EU now lies with a right-wing coalition, headed by Ursula Von der Leyen and her EPP group (of which Fine Gael is a member) and bolstered by far-right political parties like Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia and France’s Rassemblement National. Beneath the banner of “simplification” and support for SMEs, the European Commission recently proposed to gut the EU’s Business and Human Rights Law. They decided to ditch the requirements for wide stakeholder engagement and lift the obligation for companies to look far down their value chains, where human rights and environmental abuses are most likely to occur.
Yet perhaps the most dangerous thing the Commission did in taking a knife to the Business & Human Rights Law was to open the floodgates for further attacks. The other EU institutions, Parliament and Council, ran the deregulation exercise completely off the rails. I was closely involved in the negotiations within the European Parliament and witnessed the attempts to further decimate the Business and Human Rights Law. Both sides only wanted the law to apply to a handful of the very largest companies. For example, Fine Gael’s group only wanted it to apply to companies with over 3000 employees. Fine Gael’s group were also successful in completely removing the requirements for companies to develop a climate transition plan. It is very clear that this was not actually about making things easier for SMEs (companies with under 250 staff), but about taking multinational companies off the hook for the death and destruction they are causing. This was further brought home when the EPP group, including the majority of Fine Gael MEPs, voted against part of a parliamentary report that called for a Treaty on Business and Human Rights to be adopted at UN level.
Closer to home, the government has been fairly silent on the hollowing out of the Business and Human Rights Law. All we heard was that Ireland “supports simplification but not deregulation”. Seeing as the Omnibus on the Business and Human Rights Law was deregulation of the highest order, it should not have been difficult for Ireland to take a stand. Yet in discussions with other EU governments, Ireland did not speak out with countries like Denmark that opposed the deregulation. Conversely, Ireland’s leading development NGOs were very vocal about how the backtracking on the Business and Human Rights Law will negatively impact communities they work with around the world. Even IBEC highlighted problems with the changes that would allow the largest companies to pass off their obligations to smaller business partners, rather than investigating abuses along their whole value chains.
The Business and Human Rights Law was one of the first victims of the EU’s ongoing “simplification agenda”. Its loss is likely to have one of the biggest global impacts of all the simplification measures. To see the EU step back from its former leadership role will damage worldwide efforts to improve corporate accountability. Communities and workers around the world have lost one of their only means to defend their rights, protect their environment and preserve their livelihoods. It is a stark unveiling of what the new right-wing majority in the EU stands for: corporate profits over human rights, every single time.
