Mandatory corporate sustainability due diligence and its limitations: the persistence of unequal exchange

Riccardo Fornasari () and Vincenzo Maccarrone
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Riccardo Fornasari: DRJ - Dauphine Recherches Juridiques - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres
Vincenzo Maccarrone: SNS - Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

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Abstract: Global value chains are the main contemporary sites where workers' exploitation and environmental degradation occur. In 2024, the EU approved the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which aims to make large companies perform due diligence in their value chains to prevent violations of human, environmental, and labour rights. Notably, this law does not apply only to EU companies but to all large transnational companies operating within the EU. In this chapter, we analyse the CSDDD from a world-system perspective, assessing whether it might address the unequal exchange between core and peripheral countries. As the CSDDD aims to enhance the respect of human rights, labour rights, and to fight climate change, it would jeopardize two of the pillars of unequal exchange, cheap labour, and cheap nature. However, we show that the law suffers from structural limitations, which will make it unlikely that this will happen. In turn, these limitations are linked to entrenched capital interests, which has limited the reach of regulation.

Keywords: Global value chains; European governance; World-system; Corporate sustainability due diligence; Unequal ecological exchange; Unequal exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10-21
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Published in Andreas Bieler; Vincenzo Maccarrone. Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.62-75, 2025, Political Science and Public Policy, 9781035347933. ⟨10.4337/9781035347940.00011⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05433539

DOI: 10.4337/9781035347940.00011

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