Sir, – A new proposed EU directive known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could have the same effect as the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2020.
The main purpose of the new directive is to force large companies to take responsibility for damage to the planet and to people in their value chain.
The idea is to take oil spills, deforestation and human rights abuses out of our shopping baskets. Companies will have to carry out due diligence to make sure that their supply chains, upstream and downstream, don’t contribute to environmental damage and human rights abuses.
The proposed text states that “when companies operate in areas in a state of armed conflict or [...] areas under occupation or annexation [...] Member States shall ensue that they respect obligations under international humanitarian law and conduct heightened, conflict-sensitive due diligence.”
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Israel is a democracy and has every right to defend itself. However, as the EU has repeatedly pointed out, the settlements in Palestinian lands are illegal. It is expected that this will have a chilling effect on trading, investment and procurement in occupied and annexed territories, including Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, but also the Palestinian occupied territories.
The EU has repeatedly acknowledged that the Palestinian lands occupied by Israel since 1967 constitute “occupied territories” for the purposes of international humanitarian law.
In 2020, the UN Human Rights Office published a report on companies connected with Israeli settlements in the West Bank which named 112 business entities it had reasonable grounds to believe were involved in activities related to settlements. These included household names like Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Motorola Solutions.
The European Parliament will vote on the proposal on June 1st in Strasbourg. This will be followed by final negotiations between the parliament, the European Council and the commission (trilogues) before the law is finally adopted, hopefully in the autumn. The question now is whether the current text proposed by the European Parliament survives these further tests.
However, if the text stays as is, it will be a great stride forward for the EU in matching rhetoric on the rule of law, and international humanitarian law in particular, with practical actions.
This ambitious proposal will also relieve the Irish Government of the agony of interfering in areas of exclusive EU competence. – Yours, etc,
BARRY ANDREWS MEP,
Fianna Fáil,
Dublin Constituency.