The European Corporate Sustainability Directives: Extending the Common Law Duty of Care?

112 Abstract This article examines the potential for the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Directives (EUCSD) to expand the situations in which a parent company owes a duty of care to the employees and other stakeholders of its subsidiaries, and even to workers in its supply chain. It begins by examining the UK’s current sustainability reporting and due diligence regimes, which are caught between the UK’s commitment to narrow financial materiality disclosures and the extraterritorial effects of the EUCSD. It then considers the possible effects of these EU instruments on UK tort law, and, specifically, the important questions of when parent companies in groups owe a duty of care to those working for and affected by their subsidiaries, and when lead companies may owe a duty of care to those affected by their value chains. It concludes that, despite the changes likely to be wrought by the Omnibus revisions, the EUCSD still have considerable potential to give rise to parental duties of care to tort victims of their subsidiaries.