BELGIUM Trends and Developments Contributed by: Chris Engels and Julie Devos, Claeys & Engels
the CSRD and the CSDDD are incorporated into national law. Therefore, companies should stay alert to further developments, as the final scope and obligations may evolve based on the imple - mentation of the Omnibus Package. National Action Plan on BHR To give concrete implementation to the UNGPs, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights called on all UN Member States to devel - op and implement a National Action Plan (NAP) on Business and Human Rights (BHR). Belgium already adopted the first NAP on BHR in 2017. The recent second NAP of 2024 was developed based on the evaluation and National Baseline Assessment of the first NAP and, like the previ - ous NAP, is structured according to the three pillars of the UNGPs, namely “protect, respect and remedy” , as outllined below. • Protect: the obligation of states to actively protect individuals from human rights viola - tions, both by other individuals and compa - nies. • Respect: the responsibility of companies to respect human rights. • Remedy: the need to ensure that victims have access to remedies that not only exist in theory but are actually effective. The Belgian federal and regional governments assume their duty to promote and defend human rights and, using the actions in the NAP, aim to adapt their legal and policy framework accord - ingly. However, companies also have a respon - sibility to respect human rights. Therefore, the implementation of this plan applies to Belgian companies (operating in Belgium and/or abroad) on the one hand and international companies operating in Belgium on the other. Using the actions in the NAP, these actors are encouraged
and supported to respect and promote human rights. The plan includes no less than 67 actions. In particular, the following points are highlighted: • the Belgian federal government wishes to play a leading role in the development of a European legislative framework on the duty of care and a national support framework for the implementation of the duty of care in the value chains of Belgian companies, especially those operating in high-risk sectors; • Belgian governments are committed to intro - ducing a ban on products of forced labour on the EU market; • human rights are firmly embedded in Belgian development cooperation projects, specifi - cally by supporting the ‘Beyond Chocolate’ multi-stakeholder initiative for fully sustain- able Belgian chocolate (see below), providing technical or financial assistance to sustain - able producers and enterprises in developing countries, etc; • social fraud and social dumping, which have a major impact on human trafficking, are actively combated; and • Belgium contributes to developing a regula - tory framework to improve working conditions for platform workers. This second National Action Plan on BHR will run from 2024 to 2029. Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives There is a growing tendency to organize corpo - rate social responsibility (CSR) through multi- stakeholder initiatives. These initiatives often take the form of so-called covenants in which businesses, governments, trade unions and civil society work together to prevent abuses, such
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