French Duty of Vigilance: LdV Supply Chain Law
Since the French Duty of Vigilance Law came into force in 2017, NGOs and affected communities have filed multiple high-profile lawsuits — against TotalEnergies over its Tilenga oil project in Uganda and Tanzania, against EDF over a wind farm affecting indigenous communities in Mexico, and against BNP Paribas over fossil fuel financing. In 2023 alone, four new LdV cases were filed in French courts. None resulted in an operational suspension order, but each forced the defendant company to publicly disclose and — in some cases — substantially revise its vigilance plan. The law is no longer a dormant obligation. It is being actively litigated.
The French Duty of Vigilance Law (Loi de Vigilance — LdV, Law No. 2017-399) was the first mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence law in Europe. It requires large French companies to establish, publish, and implement a vigilance plan covering their own operations, those of their subsidiaries, and those of their suppliers and subcontractors. On the Sustalium platform, we now hear from French procurement teams asking suppliers to provide structured ESG and supply chain data specifically to feed into the parent company's vigilance plan — and if a supplier cannot produce the data, they get replaced.