Abstract
Supply-chain sustainability due diligence (S-SDD) is now the flagship instrument of EU sustainability policy. This new type of law originated in the international law space as a soft-law tool, with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). By 2024, S-SDD has been institutionalised as hard law-based policy in several EU Member States and, most recently, in the EU legal system through the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
But what is S-SDD? How does it work? Can S-SDD policy truly help in the pursuit of sustainable development? This thesis tackles these questions by examining the inner workings and logical underpinning of S-SDD-type laws. The thesis’ theoretical and methodological approach is informed by law and economics. In this sense, S-SDD is framed as the regulator’s response to the outsourcing of negative (sustainability) externalities from the Global North to the Global South through transnational supply chain production disaggregation.
The thesis investigates the necessary conditions for S-SDD policy to work optimally to fulfill its normative goal, identifying a key design difficulty in the creation of incentive structures that are compatible with the highly flexible and adaptive nature of transnational supply chains, and the power relationships within them.
The thesis concludes with a critical assessment of the EU’s S-SDD policy and recommendations for improvements in the future legal design of S-SDD laws.”
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