Human rights in global supply chains: Corporate social responsibility and public procurement in the European Union

The global supply chains of multinational enterprises are complex and multi-tiered, often involving many stages of production and spanning several jurisdictions. Important questions remain about how to ensure that human rights are respected in these supply chains, including how multinational enterprises are to exercise the responsibility to respect human rights in their supply chains and the role that can be played by states in protecting human rights outside of their borders. This article focuses specifically on the potential for states to use public procurement as a tool to promote human rights protection beyond their borders by purchasing goods from companies that ensure that human rights are respected throughout the whole supply chain of the procured product. The article considers the responsibilities of states and business enterprises with respect to global supply chains, including the recognised relevance of public procurement in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as part of the ‘state-business nexus’. The remaining sections analyse how the historical role of public procurement in pursuing social aims has developed to encompass matters of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and of human rights specifically; the development of the EU’s CSR strategy and the approach of the EU to linking this with developments in the EU procurement regime; and, finally, the extent to which the recently revised EU procurement regime supports the use of procurement as a tool to promote human rights in global supply chains.