Eight months after the European Commission published its proposal for a regulation to ban forced labour products, Member States do not seem to be in a hurry to take up the issue. The two competent committees in the European Parliament plan to adopt the report in September 2023 and are concerned that the EU Council will not make progress.
“I really hope that the Council will start to see this as a priority and will hurry up”, said co-rapporteur Samira Rafaela (Renew Europe, Dutch) on Tuesday 23 May. According to several sources, neither the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council, which will soon conclude its mandate, nor the Spanish Presidency, which starts its own in July, intend to put this dossier at the top of the pile.
However, co-rapporteur Maria Manuel Leitão Marques (S&D, Portuguese) said it would be good if negotiations between the European Parliament and the EU Council started under the Spanish Presidency.
“In the EU Council, and here too, there is the temptation to postpone work with the excuse of the absence of an impact assessment. The process must not be postponed or allowed to be derailed”, argued Raphaël Glucksmann (S&D, French).
His colleagues from the EPP, the European Conservatives and Reformists, as well as some members of the Renew Europe group warned about the lack of impact assessment by the Commission. “We should push for this and make laws based on facts, not on good intentions”, said Svenja Hahn (Renew Europe, German).
Reversal of the burden of proof
As with the timetable, MEPs are divided into two camps on several key elements of the text, starting with the burden of proof. The two rapporteurs, Ms Rafaela and Ms Leitão Marques, proposed two types of systems. Competent authorities should, in general, be responsible for proving that a product has been manufactured using forced labour following a report. However, the two authors of the report propose to put the burden of proof on companies when their product or production area is listed as a high risk product/area for forced labour.
This position could potentially be agreed by the S&D, the Greens/EFA, The Left and part of Renew Europe, but the other groups are strongly opposed.
Database
The content of the database that goes with the regulation is also under debate. In particular, the disclosure of the names of economic operators, or specific products, which are under investigation by the authorities.
Some elected representatives consider that the publication of this information is not justified and can be harmful to the reputation of companies.
On the other side, it is felt that it is a question of being transparent and not of publicly accusing operators who are under investigation. This is the case for the two negotiators.
Compensation for victims
A battle is also expected to be fought over compensation for victims of forced labour. For the Commission and some MEPs on the right, the nature and legal basis of the regulation do not allow this issue to be addressed.
For the other part of the European Parliament, however, a solution is possible. If the regulation cannot force companies to repair the damage caused, the EU could make this a condition for a product ban to be lifted. Economic operators would therefore have to demonstrate that forced labour had been eradicated in their value chain, but also that they had made reparation to the victims in order for their product to be allowed back on the internal market, according to the proposal of the two rapporteurs.
See the draft report by Maria Manuel Leitão Marques and Samira Rafaela: https://aeur.eu/f/70o (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)