Our analysis investigates the EU’s new family of sustainable supply chain instruments by analysing their neo-colonial nature when juxtaposed with modern European colonialism. While modern European colonialism was marked by the intensive extraction of natural resources, environmental conservation was also a key feature. Such conservation was frequently exclusionary, depriving local people of access to land for livelihood and subsistence purposes. Turning to the EU’s new family of sustainable supply chain instruments, it will be shown that these are insufficiently attentive to negative social consequences of resource extraction and demonstrate limited awareness of the risk of exclusionary conservation. The strength of their commitment to environmental protection is varied, driven in part by EU strategic interests. They are largely agnostic as to the distribution of economic value added as between the EU and third countries and do little to mitigate ecologically unequal exchange. Although the paper argues that the EU’s due diligence instruments do perpetrate continuities with modern European colonialism, it should not be read as calling for their repeal. Given that existing patterns of EU consumption are also marked by continuities with colonialism, more robust legislative requirements, taking into account the criticisms put forward in this paper, are required.
Common Market Law Review