Regulation 2024/3015 - Prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market - Main contents

Official Journal

of the European Union

EN

L series

2024/3015

12.12.2024

As recognised in the Preamble to the 2014 Protocol to Convention No 29 on forced labour (ILO Convention No 29) of the International Labour Organization (ILO), forced labour constitutes a serious violation of human dignity and fundamental human rights, contributes to the perpetuation of poverty and stands in the way of the achievement of decent work for all. The ILO declared the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour as a principle of fundamental rights. The ILO classifies ILO Convention No 29, including the supplementing 2014 Protocol to Convention No 29 and the ILO Convention No 105 on the abolition of forced labour (ILO Convention No 105) as fundamental ILO conventions and issues recommendations to prevent, eliminate, and remedy forced labour, such as the Forced Labour (Supplementary Measures) Recommendation No 203. The ILO has developed several indicators used to identify and indicate cases of forced labour, such as threats and actual physical and sexual harm, abuse of vulnerability, abuse of working and living conditions and excessive overtime, deception, restriction of movement or confinement to the workplace or a limited area, isolation, debt bondages, withholding wages or excessive wage reduction, retention of passports and identity documents or threat of denunciation to the authorities when the worker has an irregular immigration status. Forced labour is very often linked to poverty and discrimination. The manipulation of credit and debt, either by employers or by recruiting agents, is still a key factor that traps vulnerable workers in forced labour situations. According to the ILO supervisory bodies, prison labour, including where it is performed for private companies, does not in itself constitute forced labour, provided that it is done on a voluntary basis, for the benefit of the prisoner and is comparable to the conditions of a free labour relationship. Community work as an alternative penal sanction to imprisonment should always be in the public interest and should, under no circumstances, be abused by states as a means to degrade the convicted person or deprive that person of their dignity. In cases in which work or service is imposed by exploiting the worker’s vulnerability under the threat of a penalty, that threat does not need to take the form of a penal sanction but might take the form of a loss of rights or benefits.

The use of forced labour is widespread in the world. It is estimated that about 27,6 million people were in situations of forced labour in 2021. Vulnerable and marginalised groups in society are particularly susceptible to being pressured into performing forced labour. Such groups include women, children, ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, lower casters, indigenous and tribal people, and migrants, especially undocumented migrants, who have a precarious status and operate in the informal economy. Even when it is not state imposed, forced labour is often a consequence of the absence or lack of good governance with regard to certain economic operators and a demonstration of a state’s...