Products made with forced labour have no place on the European Union market
The Chamber of Commerce supports the principle underlying the proposal of the European Commission's regulation, according to which the availability of products made with forced labour should be limited as much as possible, in order to combat the use of forced labour in the manufacture of products. At the same time, it is unclear whether and how companies can determine that their cooperation partner or the cooperation partner of a cooperation partner has not, for example, used forced labour in a third country.
We are against all forms of forced labour, but the regulation must not be too harsh for honest producers
According to the Commission's proposal, goods produced as a result of forced labour will be prohibited from being made available on the European Union market and also for export. The Chamber of Commerce fully supports the principle that products made with the help of forced labour must not have a place on the European Union market, nor can such products reach third countries through the EU.
The plan contained in the Commission's proposal to start relying on the investigation of the use of forced labour, among other things, on whether the country of origin of the product is included in the database of countries with a high risk of forced labour is a bit worrying. According to the Commission's proposal, the Commission will create a database with the help of experts, which will include those countries from among third countries, where there is a high risk of forced labour according to experts' assessments.
It is not entirely clear what consequences will there be for producers of goods from a country that is included in the database, but according to the Commission's proposal, the membership of the country of origin of the goods in the database being created can be one of the arguments for starting an investigation. It cannot be ruled out that this database contains several countries that are commercially important to the European Union, for example China, where many important electronic components and other ingredients for various products come from, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where e.g. a large number of minerals used in various smart devices, which are difficult to find elsewhere, come from.
Although the Chamber unequivocally and clearly condemns the use of forced labour and child labour in the production of any goods, we are against the fact that goods can be considered to have been made with forced labour and, according to the Commission's proposal, not to be allowed on the EU market simply because the goods were made in a country with a high risk of forced labour. However, if the fact from which country the product originates is not of decisive importance in determining whether or not forced labour was used in the production of the product, the Chamber is in a supportive position regarding the proposal.
The division of responsibility in the supply chain is unclear
According to the Commission's proposal, the Member States will appoint competent authorities, which, among other things, will supervise that goods made with forced labour do not reach the market. Also, according to the Commission's proposal, Member States will establish penalties for placing on the market goods made with forced labour, which must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive according to the proposal.
For the Chamber, it is currently unclear how such supervision would work and what would be the responsibility of companies in the supply chain for the use of forced labour. For example, according to the Chamber, it is not clear that if an Estonian company buys input materials from a Latvian company, which has bought the materials from a German company, which in turn has acquired these materials from a country where there is a high risk of forced labour, then how the responsibility is distributed between these companies, if according to the decision of the competent authority forced labour was used in the production and which of these companies could be punished and to what extent.
The proposal enters into force in the general procedure, i.e. on the twentieth day after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. The exact date of entry into force of the proposal is currently unknown. The requirements stipulated in the proposal will start to apply two years after the proposal comes into force.
Check out the overview of the Commission's proposal HERE.