Allow me to thank the Parliament for giving me the opportunity to speak on this important legislative initiative: the proposal for a Regulation to prohibit products made with forced labour on the Union market.
The fight against forced labour is a political priority for this Commission.
As forced labour continues to exist and even grow, the European Union needs an effective tool to avoid products made with forced labour from being placed on the EU market.
For example, the latest ILO report issued last month estimates the total illegal annual profits from forced labour at US $236 billion, approximately €208 billion.
This is €64 billion more as compared to the previous estimate from a decade ago.
Therefore, this measure is urgently needed to provide strong incentives for companies and governments to ensure respect for human rights and better labour protection, in line with international commitments agreed by a large majority of countries, as well as to make sure that the economic operators produce their products without using forced labour. We cannot allow companies to profit from forced labour by selling their products in the single market.
The Commission welcomes the trilogue agreement reached in early March by the European Parliament and the Council on the draft regulation.
I would like to congratulate the Parliament, and especially the co-rapporteurs Ms Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques and Ms Samira Rafaela, for their remarkable work on this file.
We expect that the agreed text will lead to a balanced and effective instrument based on elements included in the provisional agreement such as the close cooperation between Member States and the Commission, as well as the implementation of a risk-based approach and the approach to state-imposed forced labour.
The main change brought by the agreed text compared with the initial Commission proposal concerns the governance mechanism, which will result in the Commission taking on the large majority of cases.
The instrument will only be as strong and effective as the team implementing it.
So, going forward, we count on Parliament and Council to ensure that the Commission will have enough resources to be able to deliver for the Union and meet the objective of helping to eradicate forced labour and ban the products made with forced labour from the Union market.
The Commission has prepared a formal statement on the financing of resources for the implementation of the Regulation. The statement was sent to the Parliament's services for inclusion in the verbatim record of this debate.
Let me thank again the Parliament for its hard work throughout the negotiations on this file and encourage you to endorse the instrument as provisionally agreed with the Council.
