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New German chancellor Merz calls on EU to scrap supply chain law | dpa international (dpa-international.com)
submitted 1 day ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/europe@feddit.org
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"We will revoke the national law in Germany. And I also expect the European Union to follow suit and really cancel this directive," he said, speaking alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

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[โ€“] Kissaki@feddit.org 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I remember a linked article that explored how the supply chain laws could turn into a long-term advantage for Europe.

Yes, it has a cost. But if we want to care about human beings and the environment, we have to regulate, and have that cost of supply chain requirements, just like we do have these within Europe for European companies.

If we do not have that, we decide to accept exploitation. If we abolish the regulation, we decide to support exploitation, because at large, that is the inevitable consequence, because it's cheaper.

Companies, the economy, can adjust just fine, as long as it's a stable environment. Dropping the regulation would not only have a human and environmental cost, but economic costs, and even more so if it were to be reapplied later. Even saying that it could be dropped is damaging to long-term market stability.

[โ€“] Saleh@feddit.org 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Historically the EU could set many quality standards that would later be adapted in other markets too. This gave European companies an edge.

But even without other markets. If the EU wants to compete on price rather than quality inside the EU market the only option is to massively lower the wages and standard of living and erase all the purchasing power advantage that was built over the past century. The next step will be to revert to child labor and forced labor as even a cheap EU cannot compete with forcing people to work for free.

By enforcing supply chain transparency European companies are protected from outside competitors who aren't subject to the same labor standards inside their countries and in their supply chain.

Finally by abolishing the supply chain transparency Germany is helping Russia circumvent sanctions both in import and export and the coalition agreement of the new government already says that they don't want to surveil the rules but rather trust companies and just do random probes every now and then. This will be a massive boost to Russia and cement the defeat of Ukraine. Merz talks about how he wants to help Ukraine have been empty posturing during opposition times.