As the negotiations on the content of the legislation advance, and in order to ensure that the  European Commission proposal fulfils its best potential, we, the undersigned Civil Society  Organisations, Coalitions and Trade Unions, believe that the below elements are essential to make  the proposed regulation efficient, implementable and above all, impactful to address forced labour  meaningfully.  

Indeed, the changes below are crucial to create the sufficient leverage to both foster better working  conditions for all and to improve the lives of workers trapped in situations of forced labour by  providing them with adequate remedies. 

Thus, we consider the elements below as fundamental:  

• The inclusion of remedies for all workers (both EU and non-EU based) trapped in forced  labour must be a crucial point of the legislation. The provision of remedy – including  compensation and back wages – should be a prerequisite to the lifting of a ban in particular  (Art 6.6). These remedies should be defined through meaningful stakeholder engagement  and ideally include the victims themselves when and wherever possible. 
• All complainants should be protected, whether or not they are based in the EU and thus  under the scope of the Whistleblower directive. This implies that all complainant’s  information should be treated as confidential (Art. 10.3 and Art. 25). 
• To be implementable, the proposed legislation should foresee appropriate lower evidentiary  standards to initiate the investigation and to adopt a decision. The available sanctions  should, similarly, be adapted as appropriate. For example, the US Customs and Border  Protection authorities  use “reasonable but not conclusive” as the evidentiary standard to issue a “Withhold Release Order” that allows the re-exportation of goods subject to the  order, but uses the “conclusive evidence, i.e., probable cause that the goods were made with  forced labour” to issue a final decision (called “forced labour finding”) which then allows  authorities to seize the goods, as currently foreseen in the European Commission proposal.  
• Avoid that due diligence measures reported by companies could be used as a defence  against the opening of a full investigation. In particular, social audits and certifications  cannot be deemed sufficient defence to ward off an investigation.  
• The European Commission should be designated as a competent authority (art. 12), to be  able to conduct politically sensitive investigations (such as ones linked to state-imposed  forced labour (SIFL)) or to contribute to the investigation process when appropriate and, in  particular, when investigating in third countries is required. 
• The Regulation should establish a rebuttable presumption of forced labour on specific  product groups (like all cotton or all tomatoes) from specified countries or regions (such as  Turkmenistan or the Uyghur Region) that would lead to a ban of these specific product  groups. 
• Bringing to an end the use of forced labour shall not mean disengagement with the  economic operator except as a measure of last resort. With the exception of situations of  state-imposed forced labour where remediation by an economic operator is rendered  impossible, the obligation to eliminate forced labour cannot be fulfilled by simply  disengaging from their operators (art. 2 and art. 6). 

Other significant elements are the following: 

• The definition of a product made with forced labour should include working or processing at  any stage of its supply chain including extraction, harvest, production, manufacture,  packaging, distribution and transport (Art 2.g). 
• The pre-investigation and investigation should also be extended to cover the buyer(s)  purchasing from the manufacturer(s) employing the workers alleging forced labour (Art 4  and Art 5). 
• When a final decision is made on goods being made partly or in whole with forced labour and  thus banned, that decision should be extended to all products from the same production  site(s) in that country or group of production sites in that country at minimum.  
• The complaint process should be centralised at the EU level, accessible and available in  different languages to ensure complainants can access it easily (Art. 10.1a). 
• Competent authorities must be able not to inform the economic operator during the pre investigation phase, when it represents a negative risk to the investigation.
• Specific regions where a presumption of state imposed forced labour has been established  should be listed as such in the database. 
• The penalties should be aligned at EU level (Art. 30.1) and shall take the form of fines and its  amount shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive (Art. 30.2). Fines could contribute to  the creation of a victims’ compensation fund (Art. 30.2). Any penalties to economic operators  shall be non-transferable (recital 29). 
• Standards of decisions should be aligned based on binding instructions by the EC to avoid  discrepancies in the decisions made by individual member States and forum shopping  opportunities (Art. 14). 
• We would caution against the inclusion of hazardous forms ( ILO definition includes any activity or work by children that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals) of child labour within the  regulation as:
  – Child labour is a complex problem of great international scale; addressing it  requires consideration of the root causes and systemic nature of child labour and  how these can be addressed or exacerbated by international efforts. Forced labour bans being extended to child labour could cause further economic devastation making the problem worse.  
  – Though the ILO proposes a non-exhaustive list of hazardous work, it is not  mandatory and ILO member States have the possibility to adapt it to their national circumstances. As a result, there is no uniform understanding about what  hazardous labour includes, and the definition can be different depending on  sector and location (e.g., cotton harvesting can be considered hazardous in one  context and not in another). Should hazardous forms of child labour be included,  this would render the enforcement of the regulation impossible. 

• To avoid a race to the bottom on enforcement, Member States should be required to publish  annually aggregated information on the implementation and enforcement of the Regulation  (PECH am 67, Article 30a(1)). 

Signatories: 

AK EUROPA 

Anti-slavery International 

Austrian Trade Union Confederation, Brussels Office 

Clean Clothes Campaign Europe 

European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights 

European Trade Union Confederation 

Fair Trade Advocacy Office 

Fashion Revolution 

GoodWeave International 

Human Rights Watch 

IndustriAll European Trade Union  

La Strada International  

SÜDWIND-Institut (Germany) 

Terre des Hommes International Federation 

The Remedy Project 

World Uyghur Congress