Ms Sorcha Tunney:

Yes, the corporate sustainability due diligence directive is part of a suite of directives and regulations the EU is putting forward, and only three weeks ago, it published its proposal on banning forced labour products, particularly looking at Uyghur communities. This directive will deal with behavioural change and with companies preventing human rights abuses and fixing them where they happen, but there is also a need for a ban on the import of products from certain regions. Ms Lawlor can probably talk to this in more detail. The US has drafted quite effective laws. Again, the EU framework at the moment does not seem to be as impactful in the sense it is based on a customs duty. It is not necessarily banning all products and it does not look as good as the US one at the moment.

There is a political reason for that as well, which we have to recognise. This directive is about changing behaviour. The conflict minerals, forced labour and deforestation regulations all sit under the green new deal the EU has adopted. Basically, it is about changing behaviour and stopping the products. They are complementary and they work to each other. There is also the proposal for the corporate sustainability reporting directive, which almost a twin of this instrument, which focuses on how work and due diligence are reported. They are taken as a suite of actions and engagement, but the directive on changing behaviour is key. That is why we want it to have a bigger scope. The scope of the corporate sustainability reporting directive is wider than the scope of this instrument. We keep talking about level playing fields and making it easier for business, but at EU level we are creating directives that have different thresholds for companies. We want to simplify it for companies. We should seek to introduce a standard threshold, whether that is by looking the UN guiding principles or concentrating on the reporting directive. Currently, the scope of the corporate sustainability due diligence directive is problematic, but there is a suite of directives.