The Council of the European Union approved the Conclusions on Human Rights and Decent Work in Global Supply Chains (December 1st 2020).

Violations of fundamental rights at work, poor working conditions, in particular insufficient occupational safety and health, lack of fair wages, irregular or excessive working time, discrimination, as well as gender-based violence and harassment disproportionately affecting women and girls,including in supply and value chains, have to be tackled by a global approach.

Establishing an enabling environment for and advancing responsible supply chain management is an important part of EU action on promoting decent work in global supply chains.

The Council of the European Union calls on the Commission to:

1. LAUNCH an EU Action Plan by 2021 focusing on shaping global supply chains sustainably, promoting human rights, social and environmental due diligence standards and transparency and which takes the experiences and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic into account. This supports the coherent implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The Action Plan should address the needs of those at the beginning of global supply chains, often in developing countries,and thus complement an updated decent work agenda.
2. TABLE a proposal for an EU legal framework on sustainable corporate governance,including cross-sector corporate due diligence obligations along global supply chains. This could include a definition of what kind of risk management process companies need to follow to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for its adverse human and labour rights and environmental impacts.

Read here to know more: Council of EU: conclusions 01 December 2020