EU Parliament Approves Sustainable Supply Chain Law for Companies

EU Parliament votes for sustainable supply chains for companies

Vienna (OTS/SK) – The EU Parliament voted in favor of an EU-wide supply chain law in a plenary session in Brussels today. With this now coordinated mandate, the EU Parliament will enter into negotiations with the Council and the EU Commission. Evelyn Regner, SPÖ MEP and Vice-President of the EU Parliament, negotiated the opinion of the Social Affairs Committee for the Social Democratic Group (S&D). She says: “The EU supply chain law represents a great opportunity for us as the EU, because with it we are introducing a paradigm shift: consumers can only rarely understand the circumstances under which a product was manufactured. But companies know this very well. Therefore, we require full transparency from them. In the future, they must guarantee us that labor and human rights as well as environmental protection regulations are observed along their entire value chain – at every single step from the raw material to the finished product. This means they can no longer hide behind subcontractors or shell companies. Unions play a vital role in this whole process. They help all workers and affected stakeholders to hold companies accountable for environmental or labor law violations.”****

Regner adds: “Even if we Social Democrats would have liked to go further in some areas, we have already achieved a lot with the report adopted today. It should be emphasized in particular that those affected by violations of the rights laid down in the Supply Chain Act will be able to claim them more easily in the future. This is made possible by long statutes of limitations for lawsuits in court, injunctive relief for the immediate termination of damage and the possibility of class action lawsuits. It is all the more scandalous that the European People’s Party almost brought this legislative project down and thus put all these achievements on hold for an indefinite period of time. We need the Supply Chain Act better today than tomorrow!” (Conclusion) ls

Questions & contact:

Lena Rank
Spokeswoman for the SPÖ delegation in the European Parliament
+32 472397210
lena.rank@europarl.europa.eu