During the night of 18 November the French Senate voted ‘No’ to the draft law on multinational companies’ due diligence. This text had intended to oblige France’s largest companies to take reasonable care in order to pre-empt human rights violations and environmental damage both at their subsidiaries located abroad and along their sub-contracting and supply chains. The text now goes back to the National Assembly for what looks likely to be a long legislative process.
France’s Senate Law Commission recommended voting ‘No’ to three of the draft’s articles. For the Commission, this piece of binding legislation would be of little use given the current ‘soft law’ instruments in operation (including OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises), that departures from common liability law is dangerous, that the text contained some legal inaccuracies, and that such an obligation would create a disproportionate risk to French business competitiveness and attractiveness (c.f.
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