The European Union Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, informally the European Union supply chain act, came into operation in 2024. It ensures “that companies in scope identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe.”

It is each member state’s responsibility to implement and enforce this legislation as outlined in the Directive, and to ensure appropriate checks and balances at every stage. In this way the legislation itself outlines a route to best practice, but this is dependent on the approach to implementation of each member state. 

Most EU member states are still working on the implementation at national level. In Italy, our campaign partners at We World have been part of the Impresa2030 campaign, working to ensure robust translation into national law. In Switzerland, not an EU member, a 2020 Responsible Business Initiative calling for mandatory due diligence and corporate liability was rejected in a nationwide vote. Since 2022 a limited due diligence legislation is in effect there, but only for minerals and metals from conflict areas and child labour.

In recent months, political discourse around supply chain legislation has been focused around the simplification of reporting processes both on national and European levels. The European Union Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive originally aimed to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of corporations. However, this is jeopardised by this push back against necessarily comprehensive reporting processes.

In February 2025, the EU Commission published their Omnibus proposal “to simplify EU rules, boost competitiveness, and unlock additional investment capacity.” Our campaign partners at Oxfam Germany and the Initiative Lieferkettengesetz (“Supply Chain Law Initiative”) – strong advocates for accountability in supply chains – heavily condemn these recent developments. They fear “catastrophic changes to civil liability provisions and a shift away from climate protection legislations – ultimately dismantling the core of the EU’s Supply Chain Directive. The proposal put forward by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen significantly weakens existing European supply chain regulations, affecting both environmental standards and human right obligations that companies must uphold along their global supply chains.” 

THE PICKERS campaign and action by our partners are timely and necessary to safeguard this legislation’s original, more comprehensive aims. Upholding, and indeed, implementing this legislation universally across Europe is essential to transforming the system and requires widespread political support as well as delivery by member states.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is a set of policies, primarily farming subsidies, that supports European farming and incentivises sustainable practices. One key criticism of the Common Agricultural Policy is a general failure to hold recipients of subsidies accountable for human rights and environmental conditions. 

The introduction of a social conditionality clause to the latest EU Common Agricultural Policy (2023 to 2027) aims to address this. It stipulates certain minimum standards for worker health and safety, threatening farmers and food producers with administrative sanctions if such standards are not upheld. 

Our partners at FIAN International say that the upcoming EU CAP reform needs to reflect social conditionality far more comprehensively.

A more direct relationship between the farmer and the consumer allows better scrutiny of the treatment of agricultural workers. More of the profits go directly to the producers rather than intermediaries, who can then provide better conditions for their workers. 

Examples of direct distribution include the Faire Orangen initiative in Germany, Solrosa in Switzerland, or the recently launched Oranges for Justice in the UK. These groups organise community bulk orders and distribution of exploitation-free oranges from SOS Rosarno, who have committed to providing their workers with permanent employment and decent work conditions, several times a season. They also collaborate with local fair trade stores to coordinate the sale of this produce. Our campaign uses these same oranges in our Meet THE PICKERS Tour.

Our campaign partner Gebana has turned such best practice into reality on a larger scale, positioning themselves as a global farmers’ market that trades differently. They shorten the supply chain by working directly with family farmers, paying them an additional 10 per cent of the sales price from their online shop on top of what Gebana has paid for the produce, including Organic and Fairtrade premiums.

Large supermarket chains are also transitioning to shorter supply chains. This helps them enforce their ethical standards and prepare for more responsibility and scrutiny being put on them by supply chain laws.

Another example of best practice is worker-driven social responsibility. It has three defining characteristics: 

• Worker organisations must be the driving force in the creation, monitoring, and enforcement of programs designed to improve their wages and working conditions.
• Brands and retailers must sign legally binding agreements with worker organisations that facilitate the implementation of labor standards established by the program.
• Monitoring and enforcement mechanisms must be designed to provide workers an effective voice in the protection of their own rights.

Campaign partner Fair Food Program in the United States is a pioneer of worker-driven social responsibility. They manage a unique partnership between farmers, farmworkers, and food retailers that ensures decent wages and working conditions for the people who feed our families. 

Worker-driven social responsibility shifts the system from an over-reliance on corporate social responsibility, ensuring that the workers’ voice is represented, that audits are not just a box-ticking exercise, instead providing measurable accountability. 

While we recognise that the picture in Europe is slightly different than in the U.S., we see a certain inability of traditional trade unions to address the issues affecting migrant workers, and we would very much encourage the concept of worker-driven social responsibility in Europe.

Workers who are subject to human rights violations are often unable to report these crimes without fear of retaliation. In addition to upholding legislation, robust complaints mechanisms allow everyone who is aware of a violation to safely report it.

In order to harmonise grievance mechanisms in supply chains worldwide, appellando – one of our campaign partners – established a multi-stakeholder framework including non-governmental organisations, unions, traders and retailers including Aldi and Lidl.

They have also partnered with local NGOs to implement training initiatives for migrant workers in Spain, educating them on their rights and access to helplines. This example of best practice highlights a collaborative approach to ensuring human rights enforcement at every stage of the supply chain, effective investigations and concerted, sustained remediation efforts.

The way implementation, enforcement and community integration are managed at a local level are a key component of providing decent living and working conditions. This involves grassroots action from citizens, producers and migrant workers themselves.

We have partnered with No Cap, a movement to combat ‘gangmastering’ in agriculture and to promote human, social and environmental rights. It was founded by ex-migrant worker Yvan Sagnet and is managed by a group of activists and volunteers who work collectively to put their professional and lived experience into action to make change. No Cap further supports local initiatives, such as the Dambe So (‘House of Dignity’) housing project organised by Mediterranean Hope, providing decent and affordable accommodation to migrant workers and integrating them into local communities.

Producers themselves can have a positive and direct impact on their employees’ living and working conditions. SOS Rosarno, who are featured at the end of the film THE PICKERS and who provide the oranges for our ‘Meet THE PICKERS Tour’, are an association of farmers in Rosarno, Italy, who have committed to providing their workers with permanent employment and decent work conditions, as well as directly supporting their access to decent accommodation and a lively and welcoming community. They distribute their fruit more directly to consumers, earning a larger profit that is reinvested in community projects.

Our campaign partner Good Food Good Farming connects grassroots initiatives with key organisations and spaces to influence policy. As a civil society alliance steered by NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and SlowFood, they advocate for sustainable food and farming across Europe. During their annual European Days of Action they mobilise their community at local, national and EU level, and in 2025 these Days of Action will include our campaign around the film THE PICKERS. Small-scale local action can have a collective European-wide impact and add pressure on decision-makers.

Certification is a great tool for helping the consumer identify products and companies that uphold best practice. Organic certification has been a key tool for proliferating the use of sustainable farming practices by proving consumer demand and helping people use their purchasing power to drive these changes. Similarly, Fairtrade certification has helped consumers and corporations alike ensure that workers in the Global South are treated appropriately. Beyond these, there are also broader certifications of production processes such as GlobalG.A.P. which are mostly driven by retailers.

However, human rights abuses within Europe are not sufficiently scrutinised by existing certifications, so there is work to be done. For example, GlobalG.A.P. is working on an add-on certification, and some of the stricter organic standards such as Demeter have included social responsibility.