The DS3D – Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive – is a complicated, highly convoluted, hyper-legalistic invention, but it “can” help workers worldwide. Despite its unpronounceable name – even for Germans – Germany’s so-called Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz “can” deliver good things for many workers, potentially. And even after its European version was seriously watered down when cashed-up corporate lobbyists in Europe got their greedy and filthy hands on it.

At the EU level, Germany’s Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (note: only German lawmakers can come up with a word like that) translates into the European Supply Chain Directive. “Directive” is the EU’s term for law.

The directive of the European Parliament (13th June 2024) is on the due diligence obligations of companies with regard to sustainability. It is called the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive or DS3D.

The directive feeds into the rather common myth – spun by corporate PR – of “corporate sustainability”, which is a rather useful ideology when selling the hallucination of business ethics. It is highly suitable for the greenwashing of corporations.

Beyond the corporate ideology, the DS3D is about the due diligence “obligations” of companies with regard to their suppliers or their supply chains in the context of sustainability.

On the DS3D there were significant reservations from various countries, including Sweden, Finland and Estonia. Industry associations – the code-word for corporate lobbying – also expressed their resentment. Worse, Germany’s then environmental-neoliberal-social-democratic government rejected the DS3D.

In addition to the countries mentioned, Austria, Luxembourg, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia also did not support the DS3D.

After further “negotiations” – the code-word for “watering down” – EU member states reached an agreement on 15 March 2024 on a debilitated version.

The so-called environmentally friendly Germany still abstained; Italy was convinced of the new (i.e. weakened) version. A required majority was achieved – without Germany.

The decapitated version raises the limits for applicability to corporations with at least 1,000 employees and a turnover of €450 million ($524 million). A longer transitional period was provided. The “possibility” (!) of holding companies accountable in European courts if they profit from human rights violations was not removed.

On 5 July 2024, the DS3D was published in the Official Journal of the EU. But that was not the end. Corporate lobbying had not given up. On 13 November 2025, the EU Parliament voted for a significant weakening of the DS3D. Handsome profits can be made on the back of slave-like labor and environmental vandalism – allowed under the ideological-neoliberal heading of “reducing bureaucracy”.

Today, only companies with more than 5,000 workers – instead of 1,000 as before – and an annual turnover of at least €1.5 billion ($1.75bn) – instead of €450 million (over three times as much) – are affected. In other words, employ 4,800 and a corporation is allowed to commit environmental and labor crimes. The same goes for corporations with less than $1.75bn turnover.

On the upside, a penalty of a maximum of three percent (an embarrassingly tiny 3%) of global net sales “threatens” (!) EU companies that do not comply with DS3D requirements.

More importantly, victims of human rights violations can no longer sue violating companies. In other words, those who are violated by corporations are made even weaker while powerful corporations are protected. In short, not much has changed in Europe for the last 2,000 years since Thucydides (460–400 BCE) said, 

“the strong do what they can and

the weak suffer what they must.”

The pro-companies and anti-human vote took place under protest from the EU’s progressive groups, but with a majority of the EU’s conservative (read: pro-business), right-wing and Neo-Nazi groups.

According to the DS3D’s introduction, the following top three objectives are to be achieved:

  1. Improving corporate governance: helping corporations to extract profits more smoothly with the aim of better integrating risk management and procedures for mitigating risks related to human rights and environmental impacts [i.e. improve corporate PR to green-wash corporations].
  2. To avoid fragmentation of due diligence provisions in the internal market: provide legal certainty for companies and stakeholders regarding expected conduct and liability – corporate lawyers need to beef up their game in order to circumvent – or appear to adhere to – the provisions of the DS3D.
  3. To increase the accountability: better performance in carbon-washing and sustainability accounting needs to be improved to hide what corporations need to hide. Smooth over negative impacts [read: become smarter in off-loading your dirt onto others. This is known as externalization] and to ensure consistency for companies regarding obligations under existing and proposed EU initiatives for responsible business conduct. In other words, these measures should become corporate policy so that corporations can fend off criticism. CEOs are on notice: these are not “one-time-only” measures. So improve your corporate PR to be successful in green-washing.

The watered-down DS3D is the supply chain backlash. What still remains is great for corporate PR but largely pointless for the environment and workers. The DS3D obliges companies to “respect” [just show a bit of respect when violating workers and damaging the environment] human rights along the supply chains. In other words, watch what happens down the track and pre-empt the DS3D by camouflaging what is really going on.

After a long struggle between corporate lobbying, conservatives and Europe’s Neo-Nazis on the one side and progressives on the losing side, the European Parliament voted to “simplify” [read: amputate] the central regulations of the DS3D.

In fact, corporate lobbying and Europe’s conservatives applied a “crowbar” to the DS3D. All in all, this is a significant backlash for human rights, the environment, the climate and global warming.

Yet, in May 2025, the two figureheads of European neoliberalism – Germany’s Friedrich Merz and France’s Emmanuel Macron – had called for the complete abolition of the DS3D – just as the neoliberal catechism prescribed: remove all regulations until the henchmen of neoliberal capitalism have created the “Uninhabitable Earth”.

However, a broad civil society alliance was able to prevent this and save some elements of the directive. Some still celebrate it as a milestone in the struggle to improve working and living conditions and to comply with environmental standards in global value chains. 

It was a double win: progressives can show that they have done something, while conservatives and corporate lobbying can say you can carry on as usual – making profits on the back of slave-like labor and environmental vandalism – but improve your corporate PR and have your corporate lawyers ready.

To some extent, EU legislators – at least on the progressive side – reacted to deadly textile factory “disasters” (the corporate engineered death of workers) in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the devastating “dam break” (read: safety measures on the cheap) in an iron ore mine in Brumadinho (Brazil), and other corporate excesses of the “imperial way” of corporate capitalism.

Under the relentless profit-driving pressures of capitalism, local corporations regularly resort to cheap natural resources and slave-like labor in the Global South, while externalizing the social and environmental consequences of profit-making – generally done with impunity in order to chase the mirage of eternal growth and the reality of corporate profits.

DS3D is aimed at changing this practice – or at least changing the green-washing practices of corporations. It assists companies in conducting fair purchasing practices and contract drafting. In cases of violations, compulsory measures, fines or exclusion from public contracts are “provided”.

According to DS3D, those companies that are not excluded under the DS3D’s generous exclusion rules are also liable under civil law for damages caused by breaches of due diligence obligations.

Since 2023, victims of human rights violations and NGOs have been using a German version of the DS3D to enforce human rights in concrete cases. A total of 297 relevant “complaints” – wow, there are complaints about corporations – had been received by Germany’s Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) by October 2025.

However, the experiences with Germany’s law have been mixed – meaning corporations got away. On the one hand, the law has shown some successes.

• Bananas: Workers on banana plantations in Costa Rica, for example, filed a complaint with Aldi Süd and were able to enforce payment of their wages after years of irregularities.

• Lorries: Truck drivers from Georgia and Uzbekistan who were on strike in the German state of Hessen also received payment of outstanding salaries after the intervention of BAFA, a very public outcry, the trade union’s fight and media reporting.

These cases show that the law can make a difference if companies take their duties seriously and BAFA takes its supervisory function seriously.

Unfortunately, Germany’s BAFA has usually not taken sufficient account of the perspectives of rights holders so far and has instead unilaterally focused on dialogue with companies. In no single complaint procedure has BAFA obliged companies to take concrete remedial action, make amends, change their economic activities or imposed fines.

Worse, the amendment (read: watering down) to Germany’s local Supply Chain Act, which Germany’s conservative government proposed in 2025 and forwarded to the parliament – the Bundestag – would further restrict the possibilities for sanctions. In other words, German conservatives work in tandem with corporate lobbying to weaken the DS3D at both European and German levels.

Initially, the European directive – in its original 2024 version – had the potential to eliminate many weaknesses – pre-installed loopholes designed to protect corporations, not workers – in the local supply chain law. It did this, for example, by increasing the participation of stakeholders and civil society and introducing a uniform civil liability rule throughout the EU.

This would have enabled much more effective protection of human rights and the environment. Yet ideologically motivated neoliberal orgies prevented this. The EU has squandered this opportunity. Corporate lobbying has won – again.

As a result, a legal patchwork remains in place in Europe which, above all, brings legal uncertainty for those affected (mostly) as well as companies (a bit). Without the originally planned intervention standard, the civil law of the place where the damage occurred will usually also be applied before courts in the EU.

In the Brumadinho case, for example, two civil proceedings are pending against TÜV Süd in Munich in which Brazilian law is applied. Meanwhile, the textile company KiK (ultra-cheap stuff) was sued under Pakistani law for a textile factory fire in Pakistan.

It is scandalous that the EU has deleted the explicit climate aspects from the DS3D in the second warmest year since the beginning of temperature records – global warming is cranked up while workers in the Global South are exposed to slave-like working conditions and wages.

In the end, conservative politicians, corporate lobbying, profit-making – now called “shareholder value” – and neoliberal ideology have legitimized the entire setup and won over workers and the environment. The far-right, Neo-Nazi and conservative coalition in the European Parliament has assured that it comes just as a New Yorker cartoon once said:

“Yes, the planet got destroyed.
But for a beautiful moment in time we created
a lot of value for shareholders.”Email