Child labour, trade relations and corporate social responsibility: what the European Union should do

Building to a large extent on the existing consensus of the European Parliament for stronger policies and certain forms of regulation on Corporate and Social Responsibility, this policy paper provides recommendations on what the European Union should do on child labour, trade relations and CSR.

The author points out that children’s rights are human rights. Children have the right to be free from child labour and have the right to education. But rights also imply that others have duties. The EU Member States like other states have "the duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business" while companies themselves also have the responsibility to respect human rights. The European Union has an important role in realising this Member States’ duty as well as to ensure that companies live up to this responsibility.

Recommendations put forward on trade related measures include:

• make a Child Labour Impact Assessment (CLIA) of trade and investment relations and combine it with a public Child Labour Hotline
• systematically include the child labour issue in EU political, human rights and economic dialogues and negotiations with third countries and international agencies
  

Recommendations on CSR related measures include:

• support and promote the ‘Action Plan for Companies to Combat Child Labour’ in all relevant economic programmes political dialogues and development programmes of the European Union, as proposed by MEPs Berman and Howitt
• make it mandatory for companies to report on child labour, also in their supply chain and thus provide consumers the ‘right to know’ how a product is made, e.g. by child labour.