Euroviews. CSDDD: A tale of corporations hijacking the EU's democratic process

A law to defend human rights and the environment from corporate exploitation should never have been controversial in the first place. 

European multinational supply chains already have a hefty death toll attached. 

Fast fashion factories like Rana Plaza collapsing and killing over 1,000 garment workers inside. 270 people buried in the catastrophic dam collapse in Brumadinho. Children drinking oil in Nigeria due to Shell’s reckless pollution of the Delta. EU-sponsored "carbon bombs" with projected emissions that are 17 times higher than the EU’s own 2030 carbon budget limit.

And still, some EU member states dare to question whether a law to hold corporations to higher standards of accountability is fair.

Last Wednesday, EU member states stalled a vote on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), jeopardising years of negotiations. 

The incoherent political mess behind the delay has the fingerprints all over it of business lobbyists who are not afraid to hijack the EU democratic agenda for their own greed.

We have seen that corporations get the ear of policymakers up until the last moment and can easily derail years of careful consensus-building. 

Is there a space for citizens and their direct representatives, the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), to be a part of the European process?

The directive’s political trilogue phase of the legislation closed in December — which should have marked the end of significant changes to the text. 

And yet, the last few months have seen France, Germany, and Italy, among other countries, make underhanded efforts to reduce the scope of the legislation or backtrack on their support altogether.

Given the horrifying scale of abuse and destruction at the hands of European