France and Germany urge the European Union to cancel the rules of the supply chain

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France and Germany called for the European Union to abolish the supply chain law that both countries had previously defended as a central climate and ambitious human rights agenda.

French President Emmanuel Macron told the business leaders who gathered in Versailles on Monday that the law, which requires companies to take measures against forced labor and alleviate the environmental impact of their operations outside the European Union, should be “outside the table.”

His call comes days after the new German adviser, Friedrich MirzHe said that the delay in the law for one year was “at best a first step” and that “its complete cancellation … is the next logical step.”

The European Union member states and the European Parliament are currently negotiating to postpone the bases of the supply chain.

Macron said he was “clearly aligned” with Mirz on this issue and that the postponement of one year was not enough. His applause comments were met in Versailles Hall.

Click on the European Union Sustainability The bases were built over the past year, as the bloc tries to see low -cost competition from China and recently an aggressive trade policy from the United States.

European Commission Chairman Ursula von der Lin bent over a retreat from member and business countries and agreed to simplify and delay the main parts of the green climate agenda that she announced at the beginning of its first term in 2019.

Macron, whose government was among the first to submit a national law for the supply chain in 2017, said that the European Union presented “a lot of restrictions” on the industry at a time when “fierce competition coming from Southeast Asia, especially China, was” fierce competition, especially China. “

French executives and commercial lobby groups were holding the European Union for several months, on the pretext that it hinders them in global competition by imposing heavy reporting requirements for the benefit of the real world.

The CEO of the Building and Logistical Services Group that implements projects in the United States and Africa said it has begun to track more than 700 measures to comply with the supply chain at the cost of “several million” euros.

In some African countries, compliance was “mainly impossible” because suppliers in the series were unable to provide the required information. “The major companies like us can do this, but the smaller companies cannot.”

French banks such as BNP Paribas also protested the application of the bases on the financial sector, and obtained a partial exemption.

Mirz’s position is a change from the previous coalition in the middle. He put it in an early general conflict with the Socialist Finance Minister Lars Klinjibl, who said that the law is necessary, but he agreed to push the committee to simplify the requirements of the reports.

The difference highlights the increasing ideological divisions on the European Union’s green agenda with left -wing politicians who are trying to adhere to the message of the laws that were agreed upon during the mandate of the last committee, while legislators in the center and right called for more cancellation in order to reduce the pressure on companies.

One of the senior European Union officials said the committee “went very far” given the geopolitical climate and that it aims to “preserve the foundations of” rules “even when we rebuild the house, is still there.

“The most complex legislation is, the weaker,” the official said.

The supply chain law was scheduled to enter into force from next year after a coexinated negotiation that ended with the original committee’s proposal. give up. It also requires companies to develop climate transmission plans and enhance the possibility of non -governmental organizations to take legal action against companies.

“Macron joins Mirz and Von der Lin in sacrificing the European values ​​of a race to the bottom with Donald Trump,” said Albani Grossei, an activist in the Friends of the Earth in Europe. It is also an “open invitation” for the right -wing leaders to seek to “demolish the European green deal.”