Corporate sustainability due diligence directive: A human rights-based assessment

Through establishing the obligation for the EU Member States to introduce within their domestic legal systems binding duties of due diligence across global value chains of large European and non-European corporations with respect to sustainability — i.e. human rights and environmental protection — the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) represents a fundamental milestone at the global level. The Directive marks the most recent step in the long legal evolution of the concept of ‘human rights due diligence’, first introduced in the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Despite some criticism, the Directive is an innovative tool, suitable — if correctly applied — in leading to the effective respect of human rights by corporations along global value chains. This article aims to analyze the Directive, pursuing the main objectives of clarifying some of its most debated and complex legal aspects — especially from the private international law perspective —, highlighting its main potentialities, and examining its most controversial loopholes and shortcomings, in order to assess if and to what extent it will prove to be capable of granting an effective protection of human rights within corporate activities.