"Save your tiers for another day", 22 April 2025

The EU risks turning its landmark due diligence law into a box-ticking exercise. SOMO’s research unpacks how the Omnibus amendments to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), especially the Tier 1 supplier restriction and the VSME shield, will drastically weaken its impact. Using supplier data from seven major European supermarket chains, SOMO shows that these changes would exclude most high-risk suppliers from scrutiny and block essential information flows. The result? A due diligence law that fails to reach the parts of the supply chain where harm is most severe.

Key findings

• The EU Omnibus proposal excludes the vast majority of high-risk suppliers from the scope of the CSDDD. The European Commission has proposed to limit due diligence to direct (Tier 1) suppliers only, excluding most companies in countries with high human rights risks that supply major European supermarkets.
• Tier 1 suppliers of supermarkets are mostly in low-risk countries. Only six per cent of the 6,758 Tier 1 suppliers of seven major European supermarket chains – including Lidl, Aldi South, and Albert Heijn – are based in countries with a high risk of severe human rights violations. This contrasts sharply with the many high-risk products they sell, such as bananas, chocolate, and tea.
• Very few suppliers will fall under the CSDDD. Only nine per cent of supermarket Tier 1 suppliers are expected to be covered by the CSDDD, making it unrealistic to assume that suppliers will carry out due diligence themselves.
• Information flow restrictions will block due diligence. The so-called ‘VSME shield’ (see below) would prevent supermarkets from obtaining the information they need to conduct due diligence from an estimated 90 per cent of their suppliers (those with fewer than 500 employees).
• These changes would undermine the law. The Tier 1 restriction and VSME shield do not simplify the CSDDD; they strip it of its core functionality. Without a risk-based approach, due diligence becomes a bureaucratic, box-ticking exercise.

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...SOMO invited all supermarkets to review the data that was used. Lidl, Aldi Nord, Aldi South, and Superunie all confirmed that their supplier lists only contain Tier 1 suppliers. Albert Heijn and Jumbo stated that their supplier lists also include some Tier 2 suppliers for certain products (e.g. wine). Albert Heijn provided additional figures on the location of its Tier 1 suppliers (which include non-food suppliers).