2020: reporting, prevention and liability for harm

The popular majority was insufficient

A constitutional amendment required a double majority. Approval across the electorate therefore did not adopt the text: the cantonal majority was missing. Calling the initiative accepted would erase that rule; denying it any majority support would erase the other half of the result. Debate about the cantons’ weight must begin with this institutional distinction.

The indirect counterproposal was a separate legislative amendment adopted by Parliament. The vote should not be described as though each voter directly chose between the two texts on the same ballot. Rejecting the initiative allowed the counterproposal’s legislative route to continue under the relevant conditions. Its substance and implementation timetable must then be examined separately.

Three functions of responsibility

Reporting supplies information about risks and measures taken. It can make corporate policy visible and comparable. It does not guarantee that a risk will disappear or an injured person receive compensation. A report is an information instrument, not the social outcome it describes.

Due diligence concerns conduct: examining actual or potential effects, acting to prevent violations and explaining the measures taken. It moves discussion from a general promise to decisions across economic relationships. Its effectiveness depends on coverage, attention to risk and the ability to verify conduct. It should not shrink to obtaining a standard signature from a supplier.

Civil liability addresses another question: who may have to answer for harm, before which authority and under what conditions? The initiative proposed liability connected to controlled businesses, with an opportunity to demonstrate the required diligence. It did not automatically make a Swiss company liable for every wrong by any supplier anywhere in the world. The scope of relationships to examine was broader than the proposed liability.

A business network can contain independent partners alongside entities subject to effective control. Treating them as one category would obstruct assigning duties to those who actually have decision-making power. Conversely, looking only at formal ownership might overlook economic power exercised in other ways.

What the counterproposal changed and left open

The Federal Office of Justice’s comparison of 12 August 2020 separated non-financial reporting from specific diligence duties involving conflict minerals and child labour. It also distinguished the categories of businesses covered. The counterproposal was therefore neither a complete absence of rules nor equivalent to the initiative.

It did not adopt the proposed additional civil-liability regime. That boundary matters for human-rights policy: publication duties may be useful while access to remedy remains unresolved. Penalising a missing report and compensating harm suffered by a person serve different purposes.

The chronology also separates decision from application. Only on 3 December 2021 did the Federal Council announce that the new provisions would enter into force on 1 January 2022, with first application for financial year 2023. These were later consequences of the 2020 debate, not obligations already being applied in the year of the vote.

Address international complexity through mechanisms

Opponents highlighted legal uncertainty, complex proceedings and economic disadvantages for Switzerland. International coordination is indeed necessary: compatible definitions and cooperation between authorities can reduce contradictions and facilitate verification. Yet a supply chain’s complexity does not make the people working within it or living near its operations disappear.

The response must concern mechanisms. Risk-proportionate duties can concentrate effort on the most serious violations. Cooperation with producers and authorities in the countries concerned can improve practices instead of encouraging immediate withdrawal. Where a buyer imposes prices or deadlines incompatible with safe production, its own decisions should be examined, alongside its supplier’s statements. This is an analytical criterion, not an allegation against a particular company.

For the PCP, stable international exchange should rest on cooperation, productive development and worker protection. Rules should follow risks and effective economic power, regardless of the partner country. They should not become a pretext for selecting geopolitical opponents while tolerating identical practices elsewhere.

The lesson of 2020 is precise: transparency is necessary, but should not absorb the whole debate about prevention and remedy. Credible policy identifies what a business must know, what it must change and how affected people can assert their rights. These remain three distinct questions even when legislation addresses only some of them.