French duty of vigilance law

Law no. 2017-399 of March 27, 2017, codified at Article L. 225-102-4 of the French Commercial Code. Any company employing, subsidiaries included, at least five thousand people in France or ten thousand worldwide must draw up and implement a vigilance plan. The plan maps the risks of serious harm to human rights, health, safety and the environment. It covers those arising from the company's own operations, its subsidiaries, and the subcontractors and suppliers with which it has an established commercial relationship. Two drafting choices give it teeth. It pierces the corporate veil, reaching entities separate from the one under the duty, which the separate-personality principle had kept off limits. And breach sounds in ordinary civil liability, so a claimant pleads the failure of vigilance as fault (the Constitutional Council struck down the civil fine in the bill as passed). Liability underwriters on large groups read it as a new cause of action. Passed seven years before the EU due diligence directive, which drew on it, the law has produced the most developed case law on questions both regimes share, such as how precise a plan must be and who has standing to sue.