After much back and forth, combined with pointing fingers at Germany, the EU member states have now agreed on an EU supply chain directive. However, the law had to be weakened somewhat in order to persuade the countries that actually wanted to abstain to agree. Germany, however, today, as announced, according to the mirror contain.
For companies with 1,000 or more employees
Originally, the EU Supply Chain Directive was intended to apply to companies with 500 employees or more and a minimum turnover of 150 million euros. This would mean that more companies would be affected than by the German supply chain law.
In the variant that has now been decided, the limits have been raised significantly: The supply chain directive should apply to companies with 1,000 employees or more and a turnover of 450 million euros or more. Depending on the size of the company, different transition periods also apply:
- 5 years for companies with 1,000 employees or more and a minimum turnover of 450 million euros
- 4 years for companies with 4,000 employees or more and a minimum turnover of 900 million euros
- 3 years for companies with 5,000 employees or more and a minimum turnover of 1.5 billion euros worldwide
By raising the limit laut Euractiv 70 percent fewer companies affected than by the original variant.
Elimination of risk sectors
But that’s not all: the risk sectors were completely eliminated. Risk sectors are those economic sectors that have a particularly high risk of human rights violations. The textile industry can be cited as an example here. Even with a smaller number of employees, these could have been affected by strict documentation and reporting requirements.
Background: Was there horse trading between the FDP and Italy?
But: How did this back and forth come about? In brief: In December, EU negotiators agreed on the supply chain directive. The vote of the member states was considered a formality. After all, the negotiations between the member states’ negotiators are intended to prevent such unpleasant surprises. In the last few meters, the FDP said: “Nope.” Germany was thus forced to abstain. Since other member states announced that they would abstain, the vote was quickly canceled.
As the Handelsblatt now reports, but there was apparently an agreement between Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) and his Italian department colleague Giancarlo Giorgetti. The deal was that Germany would abstain from voting on the European packaging regulation if Italy held back on the supply chain directive. The existence of such a deal was recently denied by the FDP.
At the same time, the Belgian Council President made improvements to the packaging regulation. The regulation that would have required manufacturers of disposable packaging to contribute to municipalities’ waste disposal costs was no longer applicable. This improvement was made in order to undermine the alleged deal between the FDP and Giorgetti. However, Italy’s “yes” to the supply chain law actually secured the necessary majority.