Germany’s Third Voluntary National Review (VNR) to the HLPF 2025

    VNR 2025 Contribution by VENRO

    Making economic activities sustainable and protecting human rights

    Worldwide, more than 32,000 children are digging deep underground for mica, a mineral. People who are making clothing for us are working for starvation wages. A European company is engaged in a huge oil project that threatens the lives of millions of humans and animals in East Africa. All over the world, humans and the natural environment are suffering along the supply chains of German and European companies.

    By embracing the 2030 Agenda, Germany has committed itself to a sustainable transformation of the economy and the protection of human rights along global value chains. Germany's due diligence act is an important step in the right direction. That makes it all the harder to understand why the current German government has announced that the scope of the act will be reduced to cover just one third of the companies concerned. Such a step would not only undermine the provisions of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), it would also hamper its effective implementation.

    At the level of the United Nations, the German government finally must push for the conclusion of a legally binding instrument on business and human rights (UN Binding Treaty). It is vital that the legal obligations on corporate due diligence in supply chains with a view to decent work and environmental protection in the Global South be enforced systematically through the Sustainable Development Strategy. On no account must they be undermined through economic policy measures to foster growth and competitiveness.

    We therefore recommend that the German government

    • support the negotiations on the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights by actively working for an ambitious EU negotiating mandate;
    • transpose the EU CSDDD into national law in a timely and ambitious manner, avoiding any lowering of the national level of protection for human rights and the environment. Until the European regulations begin to be applied, the German Act on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains remains fully in force.


    See also