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Better supply chains: According to the advertising brochure, this tannery in Addis Adeba is already committed to its employees and the environment.

Photo: Mey Dudin / epd

The EU supply chain law was almost considered a done deal - until the FDP blocked the new directive and forced the traffic light to abstain in the final vote in Brussels a week ago. The vote was then postponed indefinitely. And once again the FDP was seen as a party of naysayers and slowdowns and the federal government at EU level was at least fickle. The SPD and the Greens were outraged, but initially nothing changed. The law, which was supposed to hold companies across Europe responsible for abuses in their supply chains - child labor, environmental violations, forced labor - had initially failed.

“Dissuade the FDP from its blockade course”

Parts of the SPD, such as the Left Party and the Jusos, do not want to accept this. And submit a corresponding motion at the meeting of the party executive committee on Monday, in which they call on the federal government to "dissuade the FDP from its blockade course and agree to the EU supply chain directive (...)." Addressed to the FDP, the application, which SPIEGEL has received and which the "taz" first reported, states that it should abandon the blockade and thus "clear the way for German approval."

The FDP's veto, the motion continues, has "already damaged trust in Germany and its role in the EU." Such last-minute abstentions have become a popular term among the European public as “German votes”. The current course, the abstention on the supply chain law, "which acts like a dissenting voice in the European state, is unacceptable for us."

“Almost 80 percent think the law can be implemented”

The FDP justified its "no" as follows: Too much bureaucracy, too many reporting requirements, and medium-sized companies would be burdened too heavily by the law. The SPD party leftist Sebastian Roloff, who is also a member of the party executive committee and signatory of the motion, told SPIEGEL on Saturday: "This criticism of the EU supply chain law does not take into account the fact that small and medium-sized companies are exempt from it and that there are no additional ones for large companies either There are reporting requirements that would burden the economy with more bureaucracy. Almost 80 percent of German companies, according to the application, considered the law to be implementable.

In order to find a compromise, the applicants put forward further suggestions: For example, that companies with 1,000 employees or more would only be obliged to comply with the new EU directive. Previously, the regulation was supposed to apply to companies with more than 500 employees. Germany has had its own supply chain law in effect since the beginning of 2023.

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