Business and Human Rights without a new NAP: Germany's pioneering role is over

24.02.2025 · News

The unanimous adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by the Human Rights Council in 2011 was a milestone on the road to a global business style in which companies have an irreducible responsibility to respect human rights and provide decent work.

National Action Plans for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles

Since then, progress has been made in implementing the UN Guiding Principles around the world - a trend that is now in danger of being reversed. National Action Plans (NAPs) are a key instrument for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles. Both the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises urge all States to develop, adopt and update such NAPs on business and human rights. The EU institutions, the Council of Europe and many European governments, not least the German government, have also stressed the importance of NAPs for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on numerous international occasions.

To date, 34 countries have developed NAPs. And when the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights meets once a year in Geneva, it always looks at how many countries have newly adopted NAPs and how many have updated theirs.

In 2016, Germany adopted its first NAP to implement the UN Guiding Principles. It formally expired at the end of 2020, but the measures contained in it have continued, leading to the understanding that the NAPs term has been extended. This first NAP was internationally recognised as ambitious and formed the cornerstone of the German Supply Chain Act, adopted in 2021.

Germany's pioneering role is over

But Germany's pioneering role has suffered since then: for more than three years, the federal government has been struggling to produce a new NAP - and has repeatedly announced that it is working on updating it. Now we know: the outgoing federal government failed to agree on a new NAP. It is uncertain whether the next government will change this. The federal government's failure to agree on a new NAP is just one symptom of a larger problem: there are deep rifts between ministries in assessing the German Supply Chain Act and related EU regulations. In addition, there are decisive differences on what the federal government generally expects companies to achieve in terms of human rights due diligence.

Why the NAP remains a key issue

This not only makes it difficult for companies to assess what requirements they will have to meet in the future. It also leaves many questions unanswered about how the German government will implement its own obligations under the UN Guiding Principles in the future: How should companies with majority public ownership behave? How will the UN Guiding Principles be taken into account in public procurement? And what about the granting of export credits? The absence of a new NAP also sends a unsettling signal with regard to the effective protection of those (potentially) affected by human rights violations. The road to remedy is already hurdled with all kinds of barriers – these are unlikely to be even addressed, let alone removed, without a new NAP.

In an Annex to its state report for the Universal Periodic Review in late 2023, Germany prided itself with its supply chain act and its NAP, reported as being “currently under revision”. No such pride is justified when Germany reports next to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2025.