Red lines to the Regulation
on “prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market”(COM(2022) 453)
As the negotiations on the content of the legislation advance, and in order to ensure that theEuropean Commission proposal fulfils its best potential, we, the undersigned Civil Society
Organisations, Coalitions and Trade Unions, believe that the below elements are essential to makethe proposed regulation efficient, implementable and above all, impactful to address forced labour
meaningfully.
Indeed, the changes below are crucial to create the sufficient leverage to both foster better working
conditions for all and to improve the lives of workers trapped in situations of forced labour by
providing them with adequate remedies.
Thus, we consider the elements below as fundamental:
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The inclusion of remedies for all workers (both EU and non-EU based) trapped in forced
labour must be a crucial point of the legislation. The provision of remedy - including
compensation and back wages - should be a prerequisite to the lifting of a ban in particular(Art 6.6). These remedies should be defined through meaningful stakeholder engagement
and ideally include the victims themselves when and wherever possible.
All complainants should be protected, whether or not they are based in the EU and thus
under the scope of the Whistleblower directive. This implies that all complainant’s
information should be treated as confidential (Art. 10.3 and Art. 25).
To be implementable, the proposed legislation should foresee appropriate lower evidentiarystandards to initiate the investigation and to adopt a decision. The available sanctions
should, similarly, be adapted as appropriate. For example, the US Customs and Border
Protection authorities 1 use “reasonable but not conclusive” as the evidentiary standard tohttps://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2016-Aug/Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Forced%20Labor%20Procedures.pdf

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issue a “Withhold Release Order” that allows the re-exportation of goods subject to theorder, but uses the “conclusive evidence, i.e., probable cause that the goods were made withforced labour” to issue a final decision (called “forced labour finding”) which then allows
authorities to seize the goods, as currently foreseen in the European Commission proposal.
Avoid that due diligence measures reported by companies could be used as a defence
against the opening of a full investigation. In particular, social audits and certifications
cannot be deemed sufficient defence to ward off an investigation.
The European Commission should be designated as a competent authority (art. 12), to beable to conduct politically sensitive investigations (such as ones linked to state-imposed
forced labour (SIFL)) or to contribute to the investigation process when appropriate and, inparticular, when investigating in third countries is required.
The Regulation should establish a rebuttable presumption of forced labour on specificproduct groups (like all cotton or all tomatoes) from specified countries or regions (such as
Turkmenistan or the Uyghur Region) that would lead to a ban of these specific productgroups.
Bringing to an end the use of forced labour shall not mean disengagement with theeconomic operator except as a measure of last resort. With the exception of situations ofstate-imposed forced labour where remediation by an economic operator is rendered
impossible, the obligation to eliminate forced labour cannot be fulfilled by simply
disengaging from their operators (art. 2 and art. 6).

Other significant elements are the following:
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The definition of a product made with forced labour should include working or processing at
any stage of its supply chain including extraction, harvest, production, manufacture,packaging, distribution and transport (Art 2.g).
The pre-investigation and investigation should also be extended to cover the buyer(s)purchasing from the manufacturer(s) employing the workers alleging forced labour (Art 4and Art 5).
When a final decision is made on goods being made partly or in whole with forced labour andthus banned, that decision should be extended to all products from the same productionsite(s) in that country or group of production sites in that country at minimum.
The complaint process should be centralised at the EU level, accessible and available indifferent languages to ensure complainants can access it easily (Art. 10.1a).
Competent authorities must be able not to inform the economic operator during the preinvestigation phase, when it represents a negative risk to the investigation.
Specific regions where a presumption of state imposed forced labour has been establishedshould be listed as such in the database.
The penalties should be aligned at EU level (Art. 30.1) and shall take the form of fines and its
amount shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive (Art. 30.2). Fines could contribute to
the creation of a victims’ compensation fund (Art. 30.2). Any penalties to economic operators
shall be non-transferable (recital 29).
Standards of decisions should be aligned based on binding instructions by the EC to avoiddiscrepancies in the decisions made by individual member States and forum shopping
opportunities (Art. 14).
We would caution against the inclusion of hazardous forms 2 of child labour within theregulation as:
o Child labour is a complex problem of great international scale; addressing it
requires consideration of the root causes and systemic nature of child labour andhow these can be addressed or exacerbated by international efforts. Forced

ILO definition includes any activity or work by children that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals

●labour bans being extended to child labour could cause further economic
devastation making the problem worse.
o Though the ILO proposes a non-exhaustive list of hazardous work 3, it is notmandatory and ILO member States have the possibility to adapt it to theirnational circumstances. As a result, there is no uniform understanding about what
hazardous labour includes, and the definition can be different depending on
sector and location (e.g., cotton harvesting can be considered hazardous in one
context and not in another). Should hazardous forms of child labour be included,this would render the enforcement of the regulation impossible.
To avoid a race to the bottom on enforcement, Member States should be required to publish
annually aggregated information on the implementation and enforcement of the Regulation(PECH am 67, Article 30a(1)).

Signatories:
AK EUROPA
Anti-slavery International
Austrian Trade Union Confederation, Brussels Office
Clean Clothes Campaign Europe
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
European Trade Union Confederation
Fair Trade Advocacy OfficeFashion Revolution
GoodWeave International
Human Rights Watch
IndustriAll European Trade Union
La Strada InternationalSÜDWIND-Institut (Germany)
Terre des Hommes International Federation
The Remedy ProjectWorld Uyghur Congress3

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/--relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcms_174846.pdf from page 229 on