Until now, companies have mainly followed voluntary approaches to human rights and environmental due diligence like the UNGPs and the OECD guidelines. However, such voluntary frameworks cannot provide legal certainty and are thus limited in their leverage to improve the due diligence performance of companies.
This is why some countries like Germany, the UK, France and the Netherlands have started to develop and implement legally binding due diligence regulations or legislative proposals for such regulations based on the UNGPs.
To overcome the fragmentation of national rules on corporate sustainability-related due diligence obligations, the EU Commission published a draft directive on corporate sustainability due diligence. The directive would for the first time create a uniform, Europe-wide legal framework for human rights and environmental due diligence obligations for companies.
