Major confectionery companies urge EU Commission to press ahead with due diligence laws
A group of key confectionery companies including Ferrero, Mars, Nestle, Hershey, Mondelez and Tony’s Chocolonely, have joined organisations including the Fairtrade, Solidaridad and the Voice Network, calling on the EU to forge ahead with planned major corporate due diligence legislation, reports Neill Barston.
The collective companies, NGOs and civil society bodies, has asserted that it is vital to sustaining progress in transforming the cocoa and chocolate sector in placing human rights and environmental considerations at the heart of supply chains.
However, as the group noted, the corporate due diligence directive (CSDDD), which forms a core interlinking framework to the delayed EUDR deforestation laws that will now come in at the end of this year, face potentially being opened by the EU’s ‘Omnibus package’ legislation that aims to streamline sustainability reporting across sectors, which is due to be outlined at the end of next month.
Concerns have been expressed that these separate measures may impact on the agreed frameworks put down for the corporate due diligence laws – which could, in the view of some observers, face being watered down by wider EU legislative moves.
In a joint statement, the confectionery and cocoa groups made their respective positions clear in an open letter to EU leader Ursula Von der Layen: “In our view, the current CSDDD represents an important step forward in driving the necessary transformation of the cocoa and chocolate sector and in making human rights and environmental due diligence the norm in global value chains.
“Through the Cocoa Coalition, we have called for EU-wide due diligence legislation since our joint paper in 2019. Member states are now starting to transpose the CSDDD into their national legislation to allow for companies to prepare for implementing their CSDDD obligations on time.
“A failure to implement the CSDDD on time would undermine the position of those companies aiming to put in place systems that protect human and labour rights and the environment. It would risk the emergence of a patchwork of national legislation in EU member states, increasing compliance costs without any benefit to the sector or consumers. This would be a major setback to sustainability in global supply chains. In order to prevent more uncertainty and delays, we urge the European Commission to focus on the preparations as required in the CSDDD. We call upon the European Commission not to undertake any modification of the adopted text of the CSDDD, nor to reopen it for renegotiation by the co-legislators.”
