[Blog symposium] Mandatory human rights due diligence in practice: Lessons from France’s duty of vigilance law

The French duty of vigilance law is a groundbreaking regulation mandating corporate human rights and environmental due diligence for the largest French companies. Despite its pioneering role in Europe, the implementation law has remained underexplored academically. Business & human rights experts Antoine Duval (Asser Institute) and Nadia Barnaz (Wageningen University) have co-edited a blog symposium on the Business and Human Rights Journal Blog, aiming to dive into different dimensions of the law’s implementation.
The French duty of vigilance law is a landmark regulation mandating large companies to develop due diligence processes in order to prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts linked to their activities. Enacted in 2017, it was the first law to translate and harden the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into a national mandate, setting a precedent for similar initiatives across Europe culminating in 2024 with the adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
The law applies to companies headquartered in France with over five thousand employees domestically or ten thousand globally. Under the law, these companies are required to develop, publish, and implement a vigilance plan. This plan must identify and mitigate risks related to human rights abuses, environmental harm, and threats to public health and safety. Key components of the plan include risk mapping, regular assessments of subsidiaries and suppliers, preventive actions, alert mechanisms for reporting risks, and monitoring systems to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness.
The enforcement of the law relies on civil society organisations and affected parties. They can file legal notices and bring cases to court if companies fail to create or implement the required vigilance plans. Although groundbreaking in its embrace of due diligence, the law also faces challenges in implementation and enforcement, particularly due to its reliance on strategic litigation and uncertainty about its ability to achieve its main objectives.

From paper to practice: Blog symposium
The new symposium on the blog of the Business and Human Rights Journal entitled “The French duty of vigilance law after its implementation: (in)effectiveness, (un)accountability and (in)justice”’, and edited by Antoine Duval (Asser Institute) and Nadia Bernaz (Wageningen University), offers a comprehensive exploration of the French duty of vigilance law, its practical application, effects and challenges. Through interdisciplinary contributions, the symposium addresses a wide range of issues such as the law’s enforcement via court cases, the effects of the implementation of corporate vigilance plans, or the lessons that can be learned from the French law in the implementation of the CSDDD. The contributions offer a rich blend of academic perspectives, case studies and practical insights from practitioners.
For everyone interested in corporate responsibility, human rights or environmental sustainability, the symposium offers a unique opportunity to explore how mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence can redefine corporate responsibility and transform the governance of transnational value chains.

Read the full blog symposium.

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About Antoine Duval
Dr Antoine Duval is a senior researcher in advancing public interests in international and European law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut within the research strand ‘Transnational public interests: constituting public interest beyond and below the state.’ He leads the Doing Business Right project, in the framework of which the Institute hosted numerous events and trainings on business and human rights and the turn to due diligence.

Read more:
[New project] Asser Institute and UvA launch project on digital infrastructures of sustainability regulation (DigiChain)
The DigiChain project explores interconnections between regulatory and technological developments, and identifies the features of these emerging ‘techno-legalities’ and how they are assembled into a new governance regime for the global economy. Towards this, the project team (1) maps existing technological tools and relates them to the different stages of the due diligence process, (2) examines how the data input, evaluation and presentation underlying leading tools allow compliance with the EU CSDDD, and (3) draws initial recommendations to regulators and business on the use of digital due diligence tools.

Dr Antoine Duval LL.M.