The EU’s retreat on corporate accountability betrays its founding principles and condemns millions of children to continued exploitation.

The European Union was built on principles of human rights, justice and solidarity. Yet today, those principles are being betrayed — not by authoritarian regimes or rogue corporations, but by the EU itself.

By removing civil liability from its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the EU is choosing to protect powerful corporations instead of protecting the tens of millions of children exploited in global supply chains that feed, clothe and entertain Europe.

This is not a technical adjustment. It is a moral collapse.

Ode to the joy of children working for Europe, lyrics by Catherine Sidney & me, music by Beethoven, will be sung in European cities as a respectful & serious protest against EU politicians who support the exploitation of children, slaves and workers by eliminating civil liability pic.twitter.com/4KUkjMVaCa

— Fernando Morales-de la Cruz (@FernandoMdelaC) December 17, 2025

The original CSDDD proposal, though imperfect, included civil liability — a crucial mechanism allowing victims of human rights and environmental abuses to seek justice in European courts. Civil liability meant accountability: it meant that corporations could no longer profit with impunity from child labour, forced labour or environmental destruction.

Even then, the directive was weak — designed to appease large corporations that benefit from exploitative practices. But after relentless lobbying, several European governments went further, removing civil liability altogether and stripping the directive of its soul.

This political decision means the EU will continue to profit from the exploitation of tens of millions of children and millions of forced labourers in its supply chains, as European nations have done for centuries.

Without civil liability, victims — including the children who pick coffee beans, harvest cocoa or stitch garments for European markets — are denied their right to an effective remedy, guaranteed under Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. By eliminating this path to justice, the EU is violating its obligation to protect, defend and fulfil human rights, including the rights of the child enshrined in Article 24 of the Charter and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The reality is that the European Union remains the main financial beneficiary of the misery and child labour in the rural communities that produce coffee, cocoa and many other commodities. Almost every cup of coffee, chocolate bar or sweet sold in Europe carries the hidden fingerprints of exploited children and impoverished farmers. Meanwhile, European and multinational corporations, traders and supermarkets capture the profits.

If the EU truly wants to lead on human rights and sustainability, it must ensure that all corporations adopt a strict zero-tolerance policy toward child labour — not as a slogan but as a binding obligation. And investors must answer a fundamental question: should their profits depend on illicit enrichment linked to slavery and child labour?

Instead of leading the world in protecting human rights, Europe now appears to be competing with China and the United States to see who can exploit more children in global supply chains. This is not leadership; it is moral regression disguised as economic pragmatism.

The European Commission and member states often present themselves as champions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, yet Europe’s current economic model depends on a global system of inequality that transfers value from poor farmers and child workers in the Global South to consumers and investors in the North. Removing civil liability ensures this imbalance will continue — unchallenged and unpunished.

If the EU aspires one day to be a decent global citizen, it must first confront the truth: Europe’s wealth and comfort still depend, in part, on the exploitation of poor and enslaved children. Deleting civil liability from the CSDDD does not make that exploitation disappear; it only ensures that no one is ever held accountable for it.

It is time for moral clarity. European leaders must choose between defending corporate profits or defending children’s rights. They cannot do both — not when those profits are the direct result of exploitation.

Europe must honour civil liability and make zero tolerance for child labour a legal requirement, not a marketing slogan. Anything less is complicity in modern slavery.

* Fernando Morales-de la Cruz is a journalist, human rights advocate and Editor-in-Chief of the Lewis Hine Org and Cartoons For Change. For more than a decade he has investigated and documented the economic systems that profit from modern child labour and inequality in global supply chains. He lives in Strasbourg, France.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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