I ISO 26000: the utopia of responsible globalization

Companies are no longer totally free in their dealings with suppliers. Today, a range of international standards and national legislation govern how they must treat people and the environment within their supply chains.

One of these instruments is ISO 26000, a voluntary guide to corporate social responsibility (CSR), which encourages economic players to respect human and environmental rights.

Alongside these, the OECD and UN guidelines offer an international frame of reference to help companies avoid exploiting workers or damaging the environment.

On a national and regional level, several pieces of legislation reflect this desire: in France, the 2017 law on duty of care requires major companies to draw up a plan to prevent human rights or environmental violations in their supply chain; in the UK, the Modern Slavery Act tackles the fight against modern slavery; in the USA, and particularly in California, supply chain transparency has become a legal imperative.

At European level, the CSDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) and CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) encourage companies to report on the management of their social and environmental risks, while planning their climate transition.

ISO 26000, published in 2010, has established a global ethical foundation for CSR. It defines the guidelines for responsible corporate behavior: respect for human rights, transparency, fairness, equity and sustainability.

Its scope of application is universal: all companies, whatever their sector or location, are invited to prevent fundamental rights violations in their supply chains. However, this standard is based on a principle of soft law: it guides behavior without constraining it. Its effectiveness therefore depends exclusively on the goodwill of economic players, making it a moral rather than a legal tool.

While ISO 26000 has helped to make global players more accountable, its scope remains fragile: attractive because of its universality and humanist ambition, it nevertheless lacks the binding force to impose structural change. In other words, it embodies a “conscience without sanction”, a voluntarism that stops at the door of profit.

• The tragic example of the Prato fire in 2013 cruelly illustrates this limitation. This tragedy, described as the “European Rana Plaza”, symbolizes a Europe that preaches virtue abroad but tolerates misery at home, and reveals the powerlessness of the ISO standard in the face of opaque supply chains and the silence of subcontractors.

ISO 26000 is not a standard to be certified, it is a standard to be embodied. Its actual implementation is based on a set of complementary standards that translate its ideals into verifiable practices. These certifications require regular external audits, carried out by independent bodies, guaranteeing transparency that is no longer merely declarative.

The audit, in this context, acts as a form of institutionalized conscience: its role is not limited to identifying non-conformities, but involves setting up a system of internal control and continuous supplier monitoring, with compliance checklists, corrective action plans and periodic documented reviews. In theory, this type of system should have prevented incidents such as the Prato fire, revealing that some European chains were still exposed to serious risks. But the effectiveness of these audits depends entirely on their methodological rigor.

II When Europe wakes up: from the ruins of Prato to the birth of a duty of vigilance

The Prato fire marked a turning point. This tragedy revealed that human rights violations do not only occur in the countries of the South, but also within Europe itself. Chinese workers were working and living on the factory floor, in deplorable health and safety conditions, to supply European ready-to-wear brands. This scandal has sparked debate in Italy and Brussels about internal traceability and respect for migrant labor rights in European chains.

A few years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, another scandal broke out in German slaughterhouses, notably at the giant Tönnies, a major supplier to European supermarkets. Investigations brought to light abusive working conditions for migrant workers from Eastern Europe, housed in insalubrious dwellings, paid by the job and deprived of sanitary protection. These practices directly violated the ISO 26000 principles of health, safety and dignity at work. In the wake of this scandal, the German government adopted a reform in 2021 banning the massive use of subcontracting in slaughterhouses, while relaunching European discussions on the need for a stricter social responsibility framework.

Other sectors have not escaped criticism: in the European fishing industry, notably in Spain, Portugal and Greece, several NGOs such as Human Rights at Sea have denounced the exploitation of migrant workers aboard European vessels or vessels flying the European flag. Conditions were alarming: over twenty-hour working days, no contract, unpaid wages. These practices, although governed by European law, are reminiscent of the worst abuses of globalized production chains. In response to these revelations, the European Commission launched investigations into the sector’s compliance with ISO and OECD standards.

The same applies to the building and public works sector. In several member states, notably France, Belgium and Spain, subcontracting networks have exploited seconded workers, often from Eastern Europe, who are paid derisory wages and housed in appalling conditions. These violations of labor law blatantly contradict the principles of the ISO 26000 standard on dignity and social justice. These abuses led to the revision of the European Posted Workers Directive in 2018, with the aim of strengthening protections.

This led the European Union to rethink the model of voluntary vigilance. Gradually, the moral principles of the ISO standard were translated into binding texts.

• The CSRD directive now requires companies to publish reports detailing their social and environmental risks, while the CSDDD directive makes duty of care mandatory for large European companies and their partners.

• The aim is clear: to transform ISO ethics into a legal obligation, by filling the gaps revealed by these crises.

But even in an ISO 26000-certified company, human rights violations can never be totally eliminated. Certification is based on periodic audits, document verifications, site inspections and supplier compliance reviews, but these controls remain ad hoc and prescriptive: they measure what is recorded, but not necessarily what is happening in the factory or on the worksite at any given moment. Cascading chains of subcontractors represent a particular risk: a supplier may outsource part of the work to a non-audited workshop, where safety conditions and working hours escape the certified company’s scrutiny. Added to this is the vulnerability of internal reporting: under-reporting, concealed incidents, local practices ignored. Economic pressure and tight deadlines can further exacerbate these shortcomings, leading some to bypass procedures.

• In practice, audits are not infallible nets; they are periodic diagnostics that detect anomalies, but cannot capture all the invisible cracks in a global value chain. ISO 26000, the company’s moral nervous system, is calibrated to detect and correct deviations, but it never completely eliminates the risk of operating in complex networks.

III Increased responsibility, increased vigilance :

While the ISO standard retains a valuable universal value, its effectiveness today depends on its link with regulation and technology.

For most companies, adopting ISO 25000 is a strategic tool for anticipating regulations, reducing legal risk and securing access to sensitive markets. In a European environment where social and environmental compliance is becoming a criterion for public tenders and sustainable investment funds, the standard acts as a safety net.

• It enables CSR policies to be documented, due diligence procedures to be formalized and auditable compliance reports to be generated, providing assurance for investors and regulators alike.

Beyond compliance, ISO 26000 is also a lever for reputation. Consumers are increasingly vigilant, scrutinizing the consistency between stated commitments and actual practices. Adherence to the standard then becomes a clear signal: the company is structuring its ethical governance, putting in place measurable monitoring and control processes, and showing that it understands the challenges of an economy where sustainable performance and social responsibility are now inseparable.

Implementing ISO 26000 is a bit like installing a nervous system in a company: invisible, costly but vital. It means deploying an integrated system of governance and internal control within the company. This involves formalizing CSR procedures, mapping supplier risks, implementing social and environmental performance indicators, and carrying out regular internal and external audits. These initiatives often require the restructuring of commercial relationships, the inclusion of contractual clauses on compliance and respect for CSR standards, and the training of teams in vigilance and reporting practices.

• It’s a strategic investment: certified companies acquire organizational resilience in the face of crises, greater attractiveness to talent and investors, and enhanced credibility with stakeholders.

In Europe, we speak of profitable compliance: compliance is no longer perceived as a constraint, but as a lever for optimizing risks and enhancing reputational capital. In the long term, systematic implementation of human rights and environmental standards acts as insurance against scandals and value chain disruptions.

The normative landscape remains fragmented: between ISO standards, OECD and UN guidelines, as well as national legislation adopted in France, Germany or the Netherlands. Faced with this diversity, the European Union is seeking to harmonize standards to avoid competition and confusion.

In this spirit, ISO standards would provide the common ethical basis, while European texts would guarantee legal constraint and accountability. It is in this synergy between soft law and hard law that the true effectiveness of the international framework for preventing violations in value chains lies.

The future of vigilance also lies in the integration of technological tools and modern concepts. The use of artificial intelligence and blockchain, or the integration of due diligence, now enables more precise monitoring of suppliers, automated detection of risk areas and the performance of digital audits in real time. These innovations offer immense potential for enhancing transparency, but they also raise new challenges, not least the share of human vigilance and the high ecological footprint of digital infrastructures.

Main sources :

ISO – ISO 26000: social responsibility (2010) : https://www.iso.org/iso-26000-social-responsibility.html

ISO – It’s crystal clear. No certification to ISO 26000 guidance standard on social responsibility (2010): https: //www.iso.org/news/2010/11/Ref1378.html

ISO – Guidelines for auditing management systems (standard n° 70017) (n.d.) : https://www.iso.org/standard/70017.html

OECD – Due Diligence Guide for Responsible Business Conduct (2018): https: //mneguidelines.oecd.org/due-diligence-guidance-for-responsible-business-conduct.htm

EUR-Lex – Directive (EU) 2022/2464 “CSRD” (2022): text in OJ, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2022/2464/oj/eng

EUR-Lex – Directive (EU) 2024/1760 (2024): text in OJ, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1760/oj/eng

France – Law No. 2017-399 on the duty of vigilance (2017): full text, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000034290626

United Kingdom – Modern Slavery Act 2015 (2015): full text, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/contents

California (USA) – Transparency in Supply Chains Act (2010): https: //oag.ca.gov/SB657

SEC (USA) – Rule 13p-1 “Conflict Minerals” (2012): final rule, https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2012/34-67716.pdf

European Parliament – New forms of slavery in Europe: the Prato tragedy (Italy) – Written Question E-7-2013-013761 (2013): https: //www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-7-2013-013761_EN.html

industriALL – Fire kills seven and injures three in Italy (2013): https: //www.industriall-union.org/fire-kills-seven-and-injures-three-in-italy

Clean Clothes – Migrant workers die in factory fire (2013): https: //cleanclothes.org/fashions-problems/issues-old/migrants-in-depth/stories/migrant-workers-die-in-factory-fire

Type Investigations – Prato fire: the aftermath (2013): https: //www.typeinvestigations.org/news/2013/12/13/prato-fire-aftermath/

The Guardian – Germany to reform meat industry after COVID-19 cases (2020) : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/22/exploitative-conditions-germany-to-reform-meat-industry-after-spate-of-covid-19-cases

ETUI – “Change a long time coming for subcontracted slaughterhouse workers” (2021): https: //www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/HM23_Change%20a%20long%20time%20coming%20for%20subcontracted%20slaughterhouse%20workers_2021_0.pdf

EFFAT – COVID-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses… (2020): report, https://effat.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Covid-19-outbreaks-in-slaughterhouses-and-meat-processing-plants-State-of-affairs-and-demands-for-action-at-EU-level-7.09.2020.pdf

Oceana (USA) – Illegal fishing & human rights abuses at sea (2019): report, https://usa.oceana.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/illegal_fishing_and_human_rights_abuses_at_sea_final.pdf

European Commission – Deep-sea fishing: 2019 reports (2019): https: //oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/publications/2019-reports-deep-sea-fishing_en

European Commission – Posted workers (n.d.): https: //employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies-and-activities/moving-working-europe/working-another-eu-country/posted-workers_en

EUR-Lex – Directive (EU) 2018/957 (2018): text in the OJ, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2018/957/oj

ILO – Labour migration (n.d.) : thematic portal, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/labour-migration/lang–en/index.htm

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