France and the Netherlands have implemented supply chain due diligence laws, Germany will begin to discuss one in their parliament in the coming weeks. The EU might follow soon. The intention behind this law is to prevent human rights violations that occur in the production process, such as child labor, violation of women’s rights, environmental malpractices, etc. Companies that engage in human rights violations would become visible, their customers would be obliged to exert pressure to prevent these violations, as a last step even by terminating the cooperation with the violator.

As currently planned, the German law will make it mandatory for all companies with more than 3000 employees to perform risk evaluations concerning human rights violations by their suppliers and report their efforts—but not the individual evaluations—to a government agency.