Abstract
The newest regulatory development in the strive of the European Union (EU) to transform its
economy towards climate neutrality and social coherence, as envisaged by the EU Green Deal,
have been policies targeted at minimising the negative ecological and social impact of the
production of goods and rendering of services on stakeholders and the environment along
supply chains. After several sectoral laws, namely the Critical Raw Material Act, the
Deforestation Regulation and the Batteries Regulation, the EU has passed its first cross-sectoral
law: the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Adopting the act has
been controversial, not least for its extraterritorial application and introducing a civil liability
for companies within its scope. Since the CSDDD will oblige companies incorporated outside
the EU and simultaneously entitle plaintiffs domiciled outside the EU, it raises complex
questions within private international law. Particularly relevant are these EU regulatory
developments for Southern Africa. The region is not just a close trading partner of the EU but
also positioned as an upstream supplier of raw materials for the EU domestic market. While
holding the potential to contribute to the region’s economic growth, extracting raw materials,
especially minerals in Southern Africa, has often been linked to the deprivation of human rights
and the environment. However, in modern transnational supply chains, the division of labour
has made it difficult to assign responsibilities and subsequently give access to remedies to
injured parties. This work examines the implications the CSDDD will have on scenarios of
human rights violations in Southern Africa and, by doing so, focuses on the perspective of
Southern African plaintiffs by analysing how the changes enacted by the CSDDD will affect
their access to judicial relief. Since the CSDDD does not make any private international law
provisions, the general system of the EU Rome II Regulation and the Brussels Ibis Regulation
apply, while in Southern Africa, Roman-Dutch law guides aspects of jurisdiction and applicable
law. The work comes to the conclusion that in the absence of specific jurisdictional and
applicable law clauses tailored for the scope of the CSDDD, which follows a marketplace
principle, the CSDDD largely proves futile for plaintiffs’ access to remedies.
Keywords: CSDDD; human rights in supply chains; ESG-Regulations; private international