Debate: A new trade instrument to ban products made by forced labour
Date: THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 2022
Speaker: Dubravka Šuica
Language: EN

Finding effective solutions requires a long—term effort, combined with short— and medium-term European Union action. It will require pooling together a number of relevant policy tools at European level and in the international context. I would like to thank you for the questions you have asked. We are still developing our approach and we still expect to receive comments from stakeholders. Therefore, I will not reply to all your questions in detail today, but they are all well noted for our further consideration. In response to your questions on the process, we aim to adopt a legislative proposal after the summer break. Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis and Commissioner Breton co—lead on this file, with all relevant Commission services as well as the External Action Service closely associated. Executive Vice-President Vestager is also associated with this file. The initiative requires urgent action, which does not allow preparing an impact assessment, but the Commission will publish the evidence of a staff working document. The Commission published on 23 May a call for evidence for public feedback. Furthermore, we are currently holding targeted consultations with EU and international stakeholders. This proposal will also respond to the recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the fight against child labour and forced child labour. As regards the content of the new instrument, the guidelines were presented by the Commission President in her State of the Union speech last September, and in the Commission communication on decent work worldwide. This provided the basis for the instrument we are currently fleshing out. The aim of the legislative proposal will be to effectively prohibit the placing on the EU market of products made by forced labour, and this marketing prohibition would cover both domestic and imported products. The instruments would have a risk—based enforcement, build on international standards and complement existing horizontal and sectorial EU initiatives, in particular due diligence and transparency obligations. The measure would introduce a prohibition to place products made with forced labour on the EU market. Therefore the relevant legal basis could be Article 114 of the Treaty, possibly combined with Article 207 of the Treaty if deemed relevant. The legislative proposal should recognise the role of due diligence in identifying, preventing, mitigating and accounting for the use of forced labour in value chains. It should be coherent with the due diligence obligations established in existing initiatives. It may be useful to give guidelines to companies to help them carry out various steps of due diligence. This should be in line with those guidelines to be developed in the framework of the proposal for a directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. Such guidelines should be tailored for different types of economic operators, especially those not covered by the above—mentioned proposal. We should avoid placing unnecessary additional administrative burden on businesses and the enforcement authorities, and we should provide tools to help them with implementation. For example, an important element will be information—sharing on the risks of forced labour. The proposal should also consider the specific situation of SMEs, both in its design and enforcement. Forced labour is a very complex issue. The international dimension is important and we are cooperating with partners, including the US and Canada – who indeed have their own systems – but also with international organisations. The initiative should consider ways to cooperate with third countries, including countries where supply chains originate.