At the Autumn conference of the Interdisciplinary Center for Compliance, Integrity and Law in 2019 Heilbronn, Josef Wieland gave a presentation on the latest initiative by the German government to improve human rights especially in business and to foster a socially sustainable development of globalisation.
This National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights (NAP) was developed by the German government in line with the United Nations leading principles for the economy and human rights aiming to not only make the principles more practical for the stakeholders but also show the responsibilities for the state and the economy. Furthermore, it should guarantee political coherence and ensure the future and competitiveness of the German economy. With the realisation of the leading principles the German government intends to improve the status quo of human rights in light of the Agenda 2030 and to create socially sustainable development in this context. It further aims to make its principles more user-friendly for specific stakeholders, to show the specific responsibilities of state and business, to ensure political coherence, to make sure that the German economy can keep its competitiveness in the future, too. In his presentation Professor Wieland also shared the NAP-monitoring results of 2019/2020. It shows the number of larger companies in Germany that have complied with the principles, the non-responders and the companies that were ‘on a good way’.
The government declared that it would advocate the implementation of the NAP including the public sector and that it will set up national legislation should the voluntary agreement not be effective enough. It would, furthermore, advocate an EU-regulation in this area.
Josef Wieland also addressed the NAP topics and CSR Consensus that was agreed upon on June 25, 2018 in Berlin. https://www.zu.de/forschung-themen/forschungszentren/leiz/news/csr-booklet-published-by-federal-government.php. The CSR Consesus defines requirements on the responsible management of value chains in a globalised economy." It was set up by representatives of employers associations, trade unions, chambers of commerce and civil-society organisations as well as member companies of the CSR Forum.
LEIZ Communication Management
Contact: evelyn.pachta@zu.de
The Interdisciplinary Center for Compliance, Integrity and Law (CIL) was founded in 2017 and is based on a partnership between the Leadership Excellence Insititute Zeppelin | LEIZ of Zeppelin University and the Institute for Compliance and Corporate Law at the German Graduate School of Management and Law (GGS). It brings together current institutional economic and legal approaches of integrity and compliance in one research centre. Compliance and integrity are a core aspect of research and teaching at both institutions.
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