Challenges with the Due Diligence Directive started from the beginning because we failed to have a Think Small First approach. SMEs were out of scope and still required to go through very a complex legislation and take actions, explained SMEunited Secretary General Véronique Willems during the EPP and Responsible Business Alliance event on 24 March.

Large companies had to get ready and protect themselves, so they drowned their supply chains under different questionnaires, with different requirements, only making it impossible to digest for SMEs, she continued. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs still had to find a way out not to lose key business partners.

Asked how SMEs could be supported, Ms Willems explained that a step-by-step approach based on what smallest companies can do would create a growth path instead of thresholds for growth. She also called for capacity building for SME organisations at national level, to have the resources to support entrepreneurs. Moreover, she insisted that interoperable digital tools could ensure SMEs can share information only once and in a user friendly way.

The Omnibus proposal introduces the VSME as the cap of information in the value chain. This is key to provide real relief to entrepreneurs. We must ensure the market acceptance of the tool and provide SMEs the right support to learn how to use the standard by themselves, she explained.

Talking about the limitation to tier one, Secretary General Willems explained her concerns on the possibility to go further in case of ‘plausible information’. While it can provide for a risk-based approach, there is no clarity of what plausible information means. We have to be careful to provide companies with legal certainty, or we will end up in the same situation where in scope companies ask a lot of different question’, she said. It is not in tier one that the main issues arise, as European SMEs in supply chain comply with EU law.

The event was organised by EPP and Responsible Business Alliance and featured leading MEPs of the file such as Axel Voss, Lara Wolters, Anna Cavazzini and Adrian Vazquez-Lazara.