Listen to Julia Otten, Senior Policy Officer at Frank Bold and Andreas Rasche, professor of Business in Society at Copenhagen Business School and author.
In this new Frankly Speaking episode, Richard Howitt and his guests ask what is really happening in Europe's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the proposed law on how companies identify, prevent and remedy human rights and environmental abuses in their global supply chains.
Given political agreement by EU governments and members of the European Parliament before Christmas 2023, some governments undertook a volte face and indicated they would not support the law at the final administrative stage, when it would normally be nodded through without even discussion.
To guide us on why this is happening and what will happen now, Richard is joined by Andreas Rasche, professor of Business in Society at Copenhagen Business School and author of the book Corporate Sustainability, and Julia Otten, Senior Policy Officer at Frank Bold and lead on the Responsible Companies’ work on Corporate Due Diligence.
In this episode, you’ll hear more about:
“What is the aim of the CSDDD? It is to level the playing field. So what you want at the end of the day is to create common standards throughout Europe. If you now reject the CSDDD, you do the exact opposite because then German companies still have their German law, French companies still have their French law. And in a sense, this might even within Europe, create competitive misalignments or even competitive disadvantages.”
What are the major roadblocks in heavy industry’s pathway to decarbonisation? Listen to Jiří Mravec, Head of Innovation and Transformation at Třinecké železárny & Antonín Šámal, Research Fellow at the thinktank Association for International Affairs
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What are the reasons behind Thailand’s moves to introduce mandatory supply chain due diligence legislation? Listen to Nareeluc Pairchaiyapoom, Director of the International Human Rights Division at Thailand’s Ministry of Justice.
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Is product-level reporting rather than firm-level reporting better for the competitiveness of European industry? Listen to Brian Hill, Academic Director of the Inclusive Economy Center in Sustainability and Organisations Institute at HEC Paris, and Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS.
