By Sandra COSSART, Jérôme and Tiphaine BEAU DE LOMENIE

INTRODUCTION

The difficult journey of the French Bill on the duty of care of parent and subcontracting companies came to an end on 23 March 2017, when the French Constitutional Council (Council) decided in favour of upholding the majority of the law’s text. The new Duty of Vigilance Law has been published in the Official Journal and is now in force, although full compliance with it is required only by the next fiscal year.

The French law is the result of a four-year strenuous process that involved considerable joint efforts from civil society organizations (CSOs), trade unions and Members of Parliament (MPs). After an intense parliamentary back-and-forth between the National Assembly and the Senate, a compromise was finally reached between MPs and the French government, to which civil society actively contributed. This led to the law’s final adoption on 21 February 2017 – a historic step forward for the corporate accountability movement, and a testament of the importance of civil society participation in the law-making process.

During this long process, the Bill was nevertheless watered down. The proposal initially put forth by Sherpa and its partners was meant to introduce a new liability regime and provide for a reversal of the burden of proof from victims to companies. The changes in the Bill’s text were mainly due to intense lobbying from business, and even after its final adoption, the proponents of the text still feared major setbacks. Indeed, 120 right-wing legislators from both chambers of the French Parliament referred the Bill to the Council, France’s highest court, on grounds of unconstitutionality. Recent decisions made by the Council had suggested that it was likely to censor the text, and impose a very liberal conception of company law and freedom to trade and do business to the legislator. Nevertheless, in a landmark ruling, the Council held the majority of the law’s text to be in line with constitutional principles. The only exception was the civil fine sanctioning non-compliance with the duty of care. The Council’s ruling was welcomed as a very encouraging decision by French and European CSOs.

This piece looks at how this French law fits into the growing trend to embed corporate respect for human rights into different types of legal requirements. After describing its main characteristics, the piece reflects on the Council ruling and a potential political shift that this decision reveals.

The French Law on Duty of Care: A Historic Step Towards Making Globalization Work for All - Business and Human Rights Journal, 2017 DOWNLOAD

post

page

attachment

revision

nav_menu_item

custom_css

customize_changeset

oembed_cache

user_request

wp_block

wp_template

wp_template_part

wp_global_styles

wp_navigation

wp_font_family

wp_font_face

acf-taxonomy

acf-post-type

acf-field-group

acf-field

ai1ec_event

exactmetrics_note

The Passage Modern Slavery Service Annual Report 2021/2022
Good PracticesPublications

The majority of support is provided before people enter the National Referral Mechanism. The pre-NRM support includes emergency accommodation, addressing primary needs, signposting to a First Responder, formal referral to the NRM, referrals to healt...Read More

TAGS: Europe
National Hotline 2019 Arkansas State Report
Graphics & InfographicsPublications

The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019 and is accurate as of July 30, 2020. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More

Collaborating for freedom: anti-slavery partnerships in the UK
GuidancePublications

Multi-agency partnership working is often highlighted as an essential aspect of the UK public policy response to modern slavery. The Home Office’s (2014) Modern Slavery Strategy emphasises that effective partnership work is ‘crucial’ and must ...Read More

Assessment of the effects of annual drought and floods on child labour (hazardous and non-hazardous) and child welfare in Sri Lanka
Publications

The study aims at understanding some of the disaster-related issues and location-specific, local dynamics that impact on the communities, village households, householder livelihoods and daily survival difficulties, which directly affects the well-...Read More