On Friday 9 February, the Member States’ ambassadors to the European Union (‘Coreper’) are due to vote on the provisional agreement reached in December 2023 with the European Parliament on the proposal for a directive governing due diligence for companies (see EUROPE 13314/12).
With Germany threatening to abstain on the text, the risk of a blocking minority is growing. Finland has already indicated that it will abstain. At least two other delegations considered, on the eve of the vote, that it was difficult to support this text. However, the four countries do not represent 35% of the Union’s population, so they will need to be joined by one or two States for the text agreed with Parliament to be rejected.
On Thursday 1 February, the German Ministers of Justice and Finance published a joint letter stating their opposition to the text of the provisional agreement (see EUROPE 13341/7). At the time of going to press, several sources were telling us that Germany would most likely abstain.
However, not all members of the government share this rejection of the ‘CSDDD’ directive. On Wednesday 7 February, Germany’s Minister for the Environment, Steffi Lemke, deprecated the disagreements within her government.
“If the EU supply chain directive were to fail, it would send a bad signal for global environmental and human rights protection”, she stated in a press release.
For Helsinki, it is the changes made to class actions and disclosure obligations that are problematic. These were introduced “in the final stages of the negotiations without the content of the provisions having been properly discussed in the EU Council”, notes the Finnish Parliament in a statement supporting its government’s position.
For other delegations, it is the general impact of the directive that poses a problem. Several countries believe that the directive will create too heavy an administrative burden for their companies. Two diplomats from the Nordic and Baltic countries told EUROPE of these specific fears on the eve of the vote.
Many environmental and human rights organisations have called on Germany to approve the agreement on the directive, so that it can be adopted before the end of the legislative cycle.
“Harmonised EU supply chain legislation would help ensure that big companies are not making profits on the back of human suffering, and stop them ignoring human rights abuses in their supply chain and operations, wherever they occur”, said Hannah Storey, Policy Analyst at Amnesty International.
Up until the eve of the vote in Coreper, the Belgian Presidency of the Council submitted a new version of the text in an attempt to convince the reluctant countries. EUROPE has had access to an earlier version, dated 2 February, which provides additional details on certain articles.
To see the compromise of 2 February, go to https://aeur.eu/f/arq
To see the Finnish Parliament’s press release, go to https://aeur.eu/f/arx (Original version in French by Léa Marchal and Mathieu Bion)