31 Amendments of Danuta Maria HÜBNER related to 2022/0051(COD)
Amendment 101 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 3
Recital 3
(3) In its Communication on a Strong Social Europe for Just Transition75 , the Commission committed to upgrading Europe’s social market-based economy to achieve a just transition to sustainability. This Directive will also contribute to the European Pillar of Social Rights, which promotes rights ensuring fair working conditions. It forms part of the EU policies and strategies relating to the promotion of decent work worldwide, including in global value chains, as referred to in the Commission Communication on decent work worldwide76 . __________________ 75 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – A Strong Social Europe for Just Transitions (COM/2020/14 final). 76 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee on decent work worldwide for a global just transition and a sustainable recovery, COM(2022) 66 final.
Amendment 109 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 5
Recital 5
(5) Existing international standards on responsible business conduct specify that companies should protect human rights and set out how they should address the protection of the environment across their operations and value chains. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights79 recognise the responsibility of companies to exercise human rights due diligence by identifying, preventing and mitigating the adverse impacts of their operations on human rights and by accounting for how they address those impacts. Those Guiding Principles state that businesses should avoid infringing human rights and should address adverse human rights impacts that they have caused, contributed to or are linked with in their own operations, subsidiaries and through their direct and indirect business relationships. __________________ 79 United Nations’ “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework”, 2011, available at https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publicati ons/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf.
Amendment 116 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 10
Recital 10
(10) According to the Commission Communication on forging a climate- resilient Europe89 presenting the Union Strategy on Adaptation to climate change, new investment and policy decisions should be climate-informed and future- proof, including for larger businesses managing value chains. This Directive should be consistent with that Strategy. Similarly, there should be consistency with the Commission Directive […] amending Directive 2013/36/EU as regards supervisory powers, sanctions, third- country branches, and environmental, social and governance risks (Capital Requirements Directive)90 , which sets out clear requirements for banks’ governance rules including knowledge about environmental, social and governance risks at board of directors level. __________________ 89 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on Forging a climate-resilient Europe – the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change (COM/2021/82 final), available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2021:82:FIN. 90 OJ C […], […], p. […].
Amendment 129 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 15
Recital 15
(15) Companies should take appropriate steps to set up and carry out due diligence measures, with respect to their own operations, their subsidiaries, as well as their established direct and indirect business relationships throughout their value chains in accordance with the provisions of this Directive. This Directive should not require companies to guarantee, in all circumstances, that adverse impacts will never occur or that they will be stopped. For example with respect to business relationships where the adverse impact results from State intervention, the company might not be in a position to arrive at such results. Therefore, the main obligations in this Directive should be ‘obligations of means’. The company should take the appropriate measures which can reasonably be expected to result in prevention or minimisation of the adverse impact under the circumstances of the specific case. Account should be taken of the specificities of the company’s value chain, sector or geographical area in which its value chain partners operate, the company’s power to influence its direct and indirect business relationships, and whether the company could increase its power of influence.
Amendment 137 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 18
Recital 18
(18) The value chain should cover activities related to the production of a good or provision of services by a company, including the development of the product or the service and the use and disposal of the product as well as the related activities of established business relationships of the company. It should encompass upstream established direct and indirect business relationships that design, extract, manufacture, transport, store and supply raw material, products, parts of products, or provide services to the company that are necessary to carry out the company’s activities, and also downstream relationships, including established direct and indirect business relationships, that use or receive products, parts of products or services from the company up to the end of life of the product, including inter alia the distribution of the product to retailers, the transport and storage of the product, dismantling of the product, its recycling, composting or landfilling.
Amendment 149 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 20
Recital 20
(20) In order to allow companies to properly identify the adverse impacts in their value chain and to make it possible for them to exercise appropriate leverage, the due diligence obligations should be limited in this Directive to established direct business relationships. For the purpose of this Directive, established business relationships should mean such direct and indirect business relationships which are, or which are expected to be lasting, in view of their intensity and duration and which do not represent a negligible or ancillary part of the value chain. The nature of business relationships as “established” should be reassessed periodically, and at least every 12 months. If the direct business relationship of a company is established, then all linked indirect business relationships should also be considered as established regarding that company.
Amendment 190 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 35
Recital 35
Amendment 196 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 36
Recital 36
(36) In order to ensure that prevention and mitigation of potential adverse impacts is effective, companies should prioritize engagement with business relationships in the value chain, instead of terminating the business relationship, as a last resort action after attempting at preventing and mitigating adverse potential impacts without success. However, the Directive should also, for cases where potential adverse impacts could not be addressed by the described prevention or mitigation measures, refer to the obligation for companies to refrain from entering into new or extending existing relations with the partner in question and, where the law governing their relations so entitles them to, to either temporarily suspend commercial relationships with the partner in question, while pursuing prevention and minimisation efforts, if there is reasonable expectation that these efforts are to succeed in the short-term; or to terminate the business relationship with respect to the activities concerned if the potential adverse impact is severe. In order to allow companies to fulfil that obligation, Member States should provide for the availability of an option to terminate the business relationship in contracts governed by their laws. It is possible that prevention of adverse impacts at the level of indirect business relationships requires collaboration with another company, for example a company which has a direct contractual relationship with the supplier. In some instances, such collaboration could be the only realistic way of preventing adverse impacts, in particular, where the indirect business relationship is not ready to enter into a contract with the company. In these instances, the company should collaborate with the entity which can most effectively prevent or mitigate adverse impacts at the level of the indirect business relationship while respecting competition law.
Amendment 203 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 37
Recital 37
(37) As regards direct and indirect business relationships, industry cooperation, industry schemes and multi- stakeholder initiatives can help create additional leverage to identify, mitigate, and prevent adverse impacts. Therefore it should be possible for companies to rely on such initiatives to support the implementation of their due diligence obligations laid down in this Directive to the extent that such schemes and initiatives are appropriate to support the fulfilment of those obligations. Companies could assess, at their own initiative, the alignment of these schemes and initiatives with the obligations under this Directive. In order to ensure full information on such initiatives, the Directive should also refer to the possibility for the Commission and the Member States to facilitate the dissemination of information on such schemes or initiatives and their outcomes. The Commission, in collaboration with Member States, may issue guidance for assessing the fitness of industry schemes and multi-stakeholder initiatives.
Amendment 211 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 40
Recital 40
Amendment 245 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 57
Recital 57
Amendment 257 #
Proposal for a directive
Recital 59
Recital 59
(59) As regards civil liability rules, the civil liability of a company for damages arising due to its failure to carry out adequate due diligence should be without prejudice to civil liability of its subsidiaries or the respective civil liability of direct and indirect business partners in the value chain. Also, the civil liability rules under this Directive should be without prejudice to Union or national rules on civil liability related to adverse human rights impacts or to adverse environmental impacts that provide for liability in situations not covered by or providing for stricter liability than this Directive.
Amendment 337 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 2
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 2
Amendment 338 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 3
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 3
Amendment 340 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 4
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 4
Amendment 344 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 9
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 9
Amendment 347 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 10
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a – point iv – indent 10
Amendment 351 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a a (new)
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a a (new)
(a a) 'investee company' means a company in which an institutional investor or asset manager invests through transferable securities or money market instruments as defined in Section C Annex I of Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments and amending Directive 2002/92/EC and Directive 2011/61/EU, which is not a controlled undertaking;
Amendment 354 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a c (new)
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a c (new)
(a c) 'institutional investor' means an entity as defined by Article 2(e)of Directive 2007/36/EC, within the scope of Article 2 of this Directive;
Amendment 355 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a b (new)
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point a b (new)
(a b) 'asset manager' means an entity as defined by Article 2(f) of Directive 2007/36/EC, within the scope of Article 2 of this Directive;
Amendment 369 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point e – point i
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point e – point i
(i) with whom the company has a commercial agreement or to whom the companyan agreement to provides financing, insurance or reinsurance,, or
Amendment 375 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point e – subparagraph 1 a (new)
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point e – subparagraph 1 a (new)
Amendment 385 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point f
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point f
(f) ‘established business relationship’ means a direct business relationship, whether direct or indirect, which is, or which is expected to be lasting, in view of its intensity or duration and which does not represent a negligible or merely ancillary part of the value chain;.
Amendment 387 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point f a (new)
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point f a (new)
Amendment 393 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point g
Article 3 – paragraph 1 – point g
(g) ‘value chain’ means activities related to the production of goods or the provision of services by a company, including the development of the product or the service and the use and disposal of the product as well as the related activities of upstream and downstream established business relationships of the company. As regards companies within the meaning of point (a)(iv), ‘value chain’ with respect to the provision of these specific services shall only include the activities of the direct clients receiving such loan, credit, and other financial services and of other companies belonging to the same group whose activities are linked to the contract in question. The value chain of such regulated financial undertakings does not cover SMEs receiving loan, credit, financing, insurance or reinsurance of such entitiesfinancing, insurance or reinsurance. The value chain of such regulated financial undertakings does not cover SMEs, natural person and suppliers, neither the relationship between an investee company and an asset manager and/or an institutional investor;
Amendment 484 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 5 – paragraph 2 a (new)
Article 5 – paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Paragraph 1 and 2 shall not apply to a regulated financial undertaking complying with Article 4(1) of Regulation(EU) 2019/2088 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on sustainability- related disclosures in the financial services sector pursuant to Article 4(3), Article 4(4) or on a voluntary basis.
Amendment 574 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 7 – paragraph 3
Article 7 – paragraph 3
Amendment 649 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 8 – paragraph 4
Article 8 – paragraph 4
Amendment 740 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 11 – paragraph 2 a (new)
Article 11 – paragraph 2 a (new)
This Article shall not apply to a regulated financial undertaking complying with Article 4(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on sustainability-related disclosures in the financial services sector pursuant to Article 4(3), Article 4(4) or on a voluntary basis.
Amendment 882 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 22 – paragraph 3
Article 22 – paragraph 3
3. The civil liability of a company for damages arising under this provision shall be without prejudice to the civil liability of its subsidiaries or of any direct and indirect business partners in the value chain.
Amendment 894 #
Proposal for a directive
Article 22 – paragraph 5 a (new)
Article 22 – paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. This Article will not apply to institutional investors and asset managers regarding adverse impacts caused or contributed to by investee companies. This Article will also not apply to services within the meaning of section A (1) to (5) and section B of Annex I of Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments and amending Directive 2002/92/EC and Directive 2011/61/EU.