It is the end of a chapter full of trials and tribulations. On Friday, the Bundestag actually passed the Supply Chain Act, which obliges German companies to uphold human rights in their entire supply chain. It is a morally charged project that has been based on a chain of misunderstandings from the start. It started with a questioning of the companies about how they feel about the major goals of the international community - the campaign petered out because the documents were not sent to the responsible units in the company.
But not the sender, but the recipient was in the end embarrassed. The campaign was repeated, but the survey was now at the height of the first corona wave, in which many companies, not least in the textile industry, had completely different problems: blocked sales channels and employees who had to try the store from home keep going.
Hubertus Heil and Gerd Müller, the Federal Ministers for Social Affairs and Development, took the opportunity because they wanted to get their law through, no matter what the cost. They have achieved that: The companies involved are now supposed to do what the governments have not achieved: respect for human rights at every workplace - even at the end of the world. Local customers do not generally have the image of being brutal exploiters, on the contrary, they are generally reliable and respected partners, but that does not help them in this case. The new law makes even medium-sized companies liable for the entire supply chain. And it can consist of very many links. For the direct suppliers the obligations are very specific, for the distant ones the matter is more diffuse.Only if the management receives substantial knowledge of human rights violations in such a case does it have to take action.
Nobody knows how such guidelines should work for hundreds or even thousands of business partners. The good end evidently justifies the means. Only the initial situation is undisputed: the rulers in many countries in which German companies shop, pay far too little attention to the conventions for the protection of workers and other human rights. Even such large countries as America and China have not signed all international agreements. Other states may have ratified all of the agreements, but are not bothering about them. Some of them can be found in Africa.
Anyone who has ever been to the Congo will not forget the misery that has engraved itself on people's faces. Rival gangs have held the country under control for decades. There is a reason why people in Congo speak of blood coltan. Raw materials keep the power struggles going there. Coltan has become an indispensable part of modern microelectronics. Cell phones, laptops and flat screens can hardly do without this material. How is a Swabian entrepreneur supposed to prevent legally poisoned ore from getting into his products via the supply chain? That is simply not possible.
In general, a large proportion of the people in poor countries work in the informal sector, where the state prefers not to look too closely because it is happy that many people earn their living there. The preliminary products manufactured there end up in conventionally operating companies in the region, which can be integrated into the global division of labor.
Experience shows that international trade helps to lift countries out of poverty: Japan, South Korea and, most recently, China have shown the way - sometimes with small interventions in favor of their own economies so that they can develop better. Although this does not correspond to the pure teaching of the economic classics, it has not slowed the rapid rise of the Asians. It would be a different matter if buyers from rich countries restricted the exchange of goods because they could not understand who supplied what under which production conditions.
Will the world recover with the German supply chain due diligence law, as the joint project of the social democrat Heil and the Christian Müller in all its beauty? This expectation is simply unworldly. Companies are forced to set up a complex control system in order to check something that they can ultimately hardly control. So there is a different threat: companies that find it “too hot” in backward regions simply withdraw from there. That is exactly the opposite of what the people there need in their bitter need.