The EU’s plans to make companies accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains are at high risk of unravelling. The immediate danger sign is that the European Commission’s in-house quality control squad has given a red light to the draft law on the supply chain for the second time, a rare occurrence that might cast more uncertainty on the future of the legislation.

This time around, the scrutiny board’s rejection is making business lobbies giddy, while the dearth of publicly available information and umpteenth delay is worrying many lawmakers and NGOs — so much so that a group of 46 NGOs wrote in December 2021 a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, voicing their “strong concerns about the new delay” and asking her to show public support for due diligence rules.

This development raises the possibility that the legislation will be put on the back burner, making it difficult to finalise the bill before the next European Parliament elections and the change of EU commissioners in 2024, according to an article recently published at Politico. The article also analyses the background of the regulatory initiative’s delay and shows how stakeholders react to these circumstances.