Germany’s liberal party FDP wants to restart negotiations on the EU’s due diligence directive after the issue was removed from the agenda of last Friday’s meeting of EU ambassadors, which it said was due in December. They argue that this shows the poor quality of the preliminary agreement.
In mid-December, just weeks before Spain’s EU Presidency was coming to an end, negotiators reached an agreement on the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). The bill, first introduced by the European Commission in 2022, aims to hold large companies accountable for human rights and environmental violations in their value chains.
But on Friday, EU ambassadors did not give the green light to the deal, which was so controversial that it was postponed by Belgium’s current president. A new voting date has not yet been set.
Svenja Hahn, an EU lawmaker from Germany’s FDP (Renew), told reporters after the decision was announced, “It was unclear until the very end what the majority situation would be.”
“This is not a defense of the quality of the law if the situation is so uncertain that the topic is taken off the table at the last minute,” she added.
Hahn blamed the delay on Spain’s EU presidency, which was keen to seal the deal and left key issues to so-called “technical” negotiations after a preliminary agreement was reached.
“I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that it’s becoming more and more widespread, especially at the end of my term as council chairman. It’s all about the PR success and the handshake photo, and the political issues always remain unresolved. ” Hahn said.
“Unfortunately, over the next few weeks and months, the text is finalized and changes are made, so we don’t know for a long time what is actually written,” she added. .
Germany’s Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD/S&D) strongly supports this law, but FDP ministers within the government are against it due to internal regulations that require the government to abstain in the event of a difference of opinion within the coalition. The above was considered a “no”. The vote will be held under EU voting rules, effectively delaying Friday’s vote.
Diplomatic sources told Euractic that Italy would have also abstained had the vote been forced.
Finland, Sweden, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Malta and France also expressed a range of concerns, Hahn said.
“That’s why we view this postponement as an opportunity to improve,” Hahn said.
“The outcome of the interim tripartite consultation must ultimately be able to achieve a majority, as the votes in the council and assembly are not formal, but evaluations of substance,” she added. .
The FDP’s EU election campaign has focused on reducing EU bureaucracy, especially after German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) wrote a letter to his EU colleagues warning against the law. , critics doubted that the FDP was prepared to reject the law altogether.
Asked on Wednesday whether renegotiating parts of the treaty could allay ministers’ concerns, a ministry spokesperson said the ministry would not consider “new hypothetical scenarios”.
During negotiations between member states, Germany called for rules to be included to make it easier for companies to reduce their liability, but the proposal did not receive support from most EU countries.
(Jonathan Packloff | Euractiv.de)
