Företags ansvar för mänskliga rättighetskränkningar : En kritisk analys av EU-kommissionens direktivförslag om obligatorisk due diligence gällande mänskliga rättigheter

Sammanfattning

A new proposal for an EU Directive on mandatory due diligence for companies was presented by the European Commission on February 23, 2022. The question, however, is whether the law will be as powerful as many are hoping. When a company locates its production in a state where human rights are not respected, there is currently no binding international framework regulating the company's activities. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), a non-binding framework for corporate human rights due diligence, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises are the most prominent soft law regulations right now. However, since voluntary, non-binding due diligence has had a limited impact on preventing business-related human rights abuses, national legislative initiatives on the issue have increased. Apart from the new EU Directive proposal, in 2014 the UN created the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with respect to Human Rights (IGWG) with a mandate to develop an international legally binding instrument. The purpose of this study is to examine the current global regulatory framework, with a specific focus on the new EU directive proposal, on corporate responsibility for human rights, and to what extent it entails legally enforceable binding responsibilities. The method used is mainly an analytical legal method and the study is based on the argument that companies currently do not have a legally enforceable social responsibility and that a new international binding regulatory framework is needed to create a generally accepted minimum standard. Clearly enforceable and internationally accepted accountability rules are needed to address the problem of corporate human rights abuses. Furthermore, the study concludes that soft law can have an overall positive impact in preventing and holding companies accountable for human rights violations in global value chains, but that it is not enough to create the necessary change. The proposed EU Directive could achieve this, and the new EU standards could possibly even go beyond the EU in the context of global value chains and the EU's status as a policy maker. However, there are still several things to be desired about the proposed EU-directive, including the limited scope and several loopholes that have been identified.