Location: Hybrid event.

In person: Berlin, in the 16th International Fair Trade Summit, Room: Atelier 1 https://wfto-16th-internationalfair-trade-summit.heysummit.com/ . Note: This is a separate event and does not give access to the general WFTO summit
Online: Zoom Meeting

Date and time: 24 August (13:30-15:00)

Registration:

In person: Please register by email to ariane.piper@future.fashion (limited number of places)
Online: Eventbrite Registration Page

Description:

Companies, including Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), trade unions, civil society, and policy makers are increasingly familiar with the concept of due diligence in relation to business impacts on human rights and the environment, but many companies are still not doing it. It's a concept developed in the UN guiding principles on Business and Human Rights and includes an expectation on all companies to assess, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights risks in their whole value chain, provide for or cooperate to remedy for human rights and environmental harm that has already happened as well as report on the entire process. Legislation requiring companies to do human rights and environmental due diligence has already been passed in several countries during the last years, among them the Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz in Germany 2021. This year in February the European Commission proposed a directive on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, called Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDD) directive.

Both the proposed EU directive and the German Supply Chain Act leaves out SMEs from the scope of companies having to do human rights and environmental due diligence. Even if SMEs will not be covered by the law and reporting requirements directly, many will be so indirectly as business partners to bigger companies that have these obligations.

The Policy Dialogue aims to bring together civil society organisations, policy makers on national and EU level as well as SMEs with alternative business models trying to provide fair and sustainable alternatives. The aim is to discuss the differences between the German law and the proposed directive on EU level, the role of SMEs in the due diligence process and the risks of not including SMEs in the legislation, as well as the role of national and EU policy makers in making due diligence work for companies, in particular SMEs, workers and communities in a meaningful, measurable and transparent way.

Confirmed speakers:

Helmut Scholz (MEP, Die Linke)
Lisa Jaspers (Folkdays/ #fairbylaw)
Maren Leifker (Brot für die Welt)
Delphine Williot (Fashion Revolution global, Good Clothes Fair Pay campaign)

Policy dialogue about mandatory HREDD in the textile sector