A coalition of campaigners for fair trade, human and workers’ rights, environmental protection and transparency recently urged the European Commission, European Parliament members, European Union (EU) member states and other stakeholders to back a strategy to initiate a global redesign of the textile industry’s broken business model for the post-coronavirus world.

As the European Commission is poised to start developing a new ‘comprehensive strategy for textiles’ in the coming months, a group of 65 diverse civil society organisations recently set out its vision for the global textile, garments, leather and footwear (TGLF) sector.

They released a non-official (or shadow) strategy in which they propose a set of legislative and non-legislative actions that the EU can undertake to contribute to fairer and more sustainable TGLF value chains...

The sector has long been characterised by labour and human rights abuses along with the immense pressure it exerts on the environment and climate.