(Global Trade Review, London 19 January 2022) A planned European Union law requiring large and businesses and financial institutions to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence should also apply to export credit agencies (ECAs), activists say. The initiative has strong support from the European Parliament but the Commission’s draft text has been held up twice by a regulatory oversight board that scrutinises proposed laws, according to MEPs. In December last year, four MEPs blamed the delays on lobbying by business groups in France and Denmark, and requested access to the board’s opinions on the draft proposals, which are not usually published until proposals are formally adopted. ECA Watch, a network of global non-government organisations who argue for ECA reform and transparency, sent a letter to the Commission in November urging ECAs to be in scope of the proposed law, noting” “Active obligations from ECAs [under the law] will effectively encourage a significant number of companies to fulfil their due diligence obligations and ensure that also ECAs themselves effectively comply with the human rights and environmental obligations of the member states on whose behalf they operate… Past experience shows that export credit guarantees are repeatedly granted for projects with serious adverse human rights and environmental consequences.” One of the letter’s authors, Heike Drillisch from German human rights and environment initiative CounterCurrent, says that while ECAs judge projects against standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, they may not take an interest in the companies involved and whether they are respecting human rights. “We say that as state money is involved in export credit schemes, there should really be a heightened due diligence process in place and ECAs should be aware of not becoming complicit in human rights violations which occur in the project,” Drillisch tells GTR. Lawmakers want to capture non-EU firms too. A non-binding European Parliament resolution on the proposed law, adopted by 504 votes to 79, called on EU governments not to allow access to ECA support for companies that do not comply with the “objective” of the law. Asked how likely it is that public finance and insurance bodies such as ECAs will be in scope of the legislation, Linklaters associate James Marlow says to the extent that such organisations “are public bodies and extensions of member state governments, it is less likely that they will be directly captured by any regime… on mandatory due diligence”. However, Marlow tells GTR, to avoid reputational damage “it is possible that such bodies would be impacted indirectly as they or their government may look to align their policies and processes with stakeholder expectations and obligations” that apply to their counterparts in the private sector.