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.”
How can companies get the data which they need from suppliers? Listen to Natalie Grillon (OS Hub) and Tara Scally (Zeeman) in Frankly Speaking.
Why the Omnibus, portrayed by some as a tidying up exercise to get rid of duplication, should be seen as something more serious than that? Listen to Filip Gregor, Head of Responsible Companies at Frank Bold.
How to respond to the backlash against sustainability legislation? Listen to Alberto Alemanno, founder of the Good Lobby and Patrizia Heidegger, deputy secretary general at EEB