this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
140 points (99.3% liked)

Europe

8324 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out [email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
140
EU Parliament, Council agree to ban products made with forced labour (www.reuters.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

European Union Council and the European Parliament on Tuesday reached a provisional agreement to ban the entry of products made with forced labour into the European single market.

The agreement clarifies the different responsibilities the EU Commission and the member states in identifying the companies exploiting forced workers and banning their products.

The deal intends to break these companies' business model, Pierre-Yves Dermagne Belgium's Economy and Labour Minister said in a statement.

"With this regulation we want to make sure that there is no place for their products on our single market, whether they are manufactured in Europe or abroad," he said. Belgium currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.

The bans would be enforced on goods made outside the EU by forced labour and on products manufactured in the EU with parts made abroad by forced labour.

The provisional agreement still needs to be formally approved by the European Parliament and the Council to be enforced.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That sounds nice on paper, but also difficult to enforce, no?

While the average smartphone wasn’t made by forced labour, what about the lithium in the battery? Or the cobalt?

I imagine if you traced a component of just about any product back to its raw materials, you’re bound to find either forced or vastly underpaid people.

But hey, at least they’re TRYING to do something positive.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago

It inlcudes components. So most likely companies will write it in their contracts and then will be able to sue parts providers, when they fail to not include forced labour. Thats how you break something like this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You'd expect at least very large corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Tesla etc to be very aware of every step in manufacturing their products.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Tesla cant even make a car that doesn't have the bumpers fall off in the rain. Boeing has shown us that karge companies don't care ehat is going on behind the scenes so long as they can show shareholders reduced costs.