“EU Member States must deliver the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive"

The negative impacts of corporate activities on human rights and the environment are
not the hazardous and occasional externalities of business activities; they are often the
consequences of an economic system that puts profit over people and the extraction
of wealth over care for the planet.

Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence could become a reality after
many years of advocacy efforts from civil society and faith-based and religious
organisations. It is now on the Council of the European Union to ensure that the
Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is adopted to guarantee
access to justice for those affected by corporate abuses.

Echoing the 2020 Catholic Bishops’ statement asking for mandatory human rights and
environmental due diligence legislation, CIDSE and COMECE call now on the
governments of EU Member States to urgently adopt the compromise text resulting
from political trialogue negotiations last December in order to address the risks that
corporate activities pose to our Human Family and our Common Home.

Our call joins that of the 2023 Faith Leaders Statement calling on EU lawmakers to adopt
a strong law holding companies accountable for their actions that damage the
environment and abuse human rights, as well as that of a large number of EU citizens,
European and global businesses, investors and international organisations such as the
OECD, OHCHR and the ILO. Large, medium-size and small companies support the
current compromise as “feasible and appropriate”.

As the 2020 Bishops’ statement stressed: “Now more than ever, we need mandatory
supply chain due diligence to stop corporate abuse and guarantee global solidarity.”