To start off our newsletter series "ESG and Law“, we will be reporting on new laws in the areas of environment, social & governance (ESG), sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) that have already been passed or are currently in the political debate. Particularly noteworthy here are the increasingly concrete considerations for a national or Europe-wide law on human rights due diligence obligations in the supply chain: On 14 July 2020, the Federal Ministers Dr Gerd Müller and Hubertus Heil informed in a press conference about the "again disappointing" results of the second round of monitoring of the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights (NAP). Considerably less than 50 percent of the companies were in fact complying with their corporate duty of care. Now the coalition agreement for a supply chain law is taking effect, with the aim of achieving a conclusion before the end of this legislative period.
The corona crisis has not stopped the discussion about sustainability, on the contrary, it has perhaps even promoted it further (see our Newsletter "Corona vs. CSR: Does the Virus also Stop Sustainability?" of early April 2020). The new decade will therefore continue to be in the spotlight of sustainability (see fundamentally our Newsletter "Outlook Corporate Social Responsibility 2020: More Sustainability, More Acts, More Risk" of early February 2020).
In our Newsletter "ESG and Law: Sustainability Remains a Political Focus" we now report on the following current topics:
Enterprises should thus prepare for increased ‑ also regulatory ‑ measures to promote a sustainable economy and the announced transition to a "Green Economy". At present, this is particularly true with regard to the national law on due diligence in the supply chain which has now been explicitly announced.