Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

Factory workers, cashiers and hotel staff in Greece could soon be working longer shifts, with the country set to become the first EU member to officially introduce a 13-hour workday for the private sector. Parliament is set to vote on the controversial legislation on Wednesday, amid planned nationwide protest rallies. Despite growing pushback from unions and opposition parties, the bill is expected to pass comfortably with the votes of the ruling New Democracy party. Since taking power in 2019, the center-left government has transformed the country’s labor market into what it hails as one of the most “flexible” in Europe. Starting in July 2024, employees in industry, retail, agriculture and some service sectors can be asked to work a new six-day schedule, with an extra 40 percent paid on top of their regular wage for the sixth working day. The move, a shift against a trend toward shorter working weeks in some European countries, was deemed necessary due to Greece’s aging and shrinking population and a major shortage of skilled workers. Greece was gripped by a general strike on Tuesday, the second this month, as unions demanded the withdrawal of the new legislation. Most public transport and public services were brought to a standstill amid mass protests. “Flexible working hours” in practice means “the abolition of the eight-hour workday, the destruction of every concept of family and social life and the legalization of overexploitation,” the public sector union, ADEDY, said in a statement. The new legislation stipulates that employees can work up to 13 hours per day on no more than 37.5 days per year, with a maximum limit of 48 hours per week, based on a four-month average and maximum overtime of 150 hours. But the 40-hour workweek continues to be the rule, and overtime in general is to be better compensated, with a 40 percent bonus. The 13-hour workday should be voluntary with no employee obliged to work overtime, the Labor Ministry has said. But unions have argued that employers have the upper hand in this negotiation, particularly in a country with almost no tradition of workplace inspections. The legislation would also introduce an option for annual leave to be fragmented into more than two parts throughout the year, flexible weekly schedules, two-day contracts and fast-track hiring via an app, all in order to fulfill “urgent company needs,” the draft legislation says. Greece’s economy has rebounded since its decade-long financial crisis, which started with the 2009 debt crisis and was followed by three bailout programs that lasted until 2018. The unemployment rate, which during the crisis reached a staggering 28 percent, was at 8.1 percent in August, the latest month for which figures available. The EU average stood at 5.9 percent. However, there has been no convergence with the EU on the rest of the data: Salaries remain among the lowest in the bloc, which means many Greeks are forced to work two jobs to cover the soaring cost of living, in particular high housing costs. The country is second to last in the EU when it comes to purchasing power, with nearly half of households unable to afford basic necessities, according to a 2024 report by the European Committee of Social Rights. One in five Greeks works more than 45 hours a week, the highest rate in the European Union, according to Eurostat data published earlier this month. According to OECD data, Greece ranked fifth worldwide in terms of annual working hours in 2023, behind only Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile. NEW LABOR RULES WILL GIVE ‘BOOST TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR’ Labor Minister Niki Kerameus of the New Democracy Party strongly supports the new legislation, arguing that it “gives a boost to the private sector” and “strengthens the employees.”  “The expression ’13-hour workday’ implies that we will all work 13 hours every day, all year round. Is this true? Can it happen every day? No, is the answer. It can happen up to 37 days a year, or three days a month. Secondly, it requires the employee’s agreement,” she told Skai TV in an interview on Tuesday. Kerameus has repeatedly stressed that an employee cannot be laid off for refusing to accept the new rules, added that with unemployment levels at a “17-year low […], you can understand how much this strengthens the position of the employee.” But opponents of the new law, including Dimitrios Mantzos, a lawmaker with the main opposition socialist Pasok party, called out the government in parliament on Tuesday for deregulating labor relations, heightening job insecurity and disrupting work-life balance. “The mere fact that we are here discussing such a bill is unacceptable, it is shameful, it is backward,” said Efi Achtsioglou, an MP with the New Left party. “It is unthinkable that in 2025 we are still debating whether to legislate a 13-hour work day.” Labor market experts have said the move would legalize labor rights violations that have been committed by employers in terms of overtime work and will lead to burnout and increased accidents. The legislation has been repeatedly condemned by employee representatives. “These regulations exacerbate job insecurity and reinforce the model of flexible and unprotected work,” Greece’s main private sector union, the Greek General Confederation of Labour, said in a letter to Kerameus in late September.

BRUSSELS — A two-day strike by French air traffic controllers disrupted more than a thousand flights, and airlines are hopping mad over the millions of euros they’ve lost. “I’d be better if I wasn’t canceling 400 flights and 70,000 passengers just because a bunch of French air traffic controllers want to have recreational strikes,” Ryanair’s chief executive officer Michael O’Leary told POLITICO. The walkout “is extremely expensive for us. It costs us millions of euros,” said Benjamin Smith, the CEO of Air France-KLM Group, during a press call. The strike, which took place on Thursday and Friday, was over disputes between two unions and the French directorate general for civil aviation regarding understaffing and the introduction of a new biometric time clock system to monitor air traffic controllers’ work attendance. Airlines are increasingly angry over the frequent French strikes that regularly upend their schedules. “There’s no shortage of air traffic controllers in France. The real issue is that they don’t roster them particularly well,” O’Leary said, adding that the French controllers “are just badly managed.” The strike “is a horrible image for France, for customers at the beginning of the summer vacation season coming into this wonderful country, to be faced with either delayed or canceled flights,” Smith added. “It’s not something that you see in the rest of Europe.” Unions have long complained about structural understaffing of air traffic controllers. Staffing shortages played a role in a near-collision between an easyJet plane and a private jet at the Bordeaux airport in December 2022, according to French investigators. They found that three controllers were working in the tower at the time of the incident instead of the six required by the duty roster. This week’s walkout was called by France’s second-largest air traffic controllers’ union, UNSA-ICNA; it was joined by the USAC-CGT, the third-largest union. According to AFP, some 270 controllers out of 1,400 participated in the strike on Thursday. The airlines also accused France of failing to protect planes flying over the country during these actions, which cause disruption throughout Europe. “It is indefensible that today that I’m canceling flights from Ireland to Italy, from Germany to Spain, from Portugal to Poland,” O’Leary said.  The budget airline chief blamed the European Union, and specifically European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for the situation. O’Leary said that of Ryanair’s 400 cancellations caused by the strike, “360, or 90 percent of those flights, would operate if the Commission protected the overflights as Spain, Italy and Greece do during air traffic control strikes.” “Von der Leyen and the Commission made a big song and dance during Brexit about: ‘We must protect the single market, the single market is sacrosanct, nothing would be allowed to disrupt the single market,’” he said. “Unless you’re a French air traffic controller and you can shut down the sky over France.” “Ursula von der Leyen, being the useless politician that she is, would rather sit in her office in Brussels, pontificating about Palestine or U.S. trade agreements or anything else. Anything but take any effective action to protect the flights of holidaymakers,” O’Leary said after calling for von der Leyen to quit unless she can reform European air traffic control. Von der Leyen is under fire for various actions and even faces a confidence vote in European Parliament next week. The European Commission did not respond to Ryanair’s statement, but transport spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen insisted that air traffic control issues are “on the Commission’s radar.” But “air traffic controlling, per international and EU legislation, it’s the responsibility of member states and countries generally,” she added during a press briefing. “We fully acknowledge the legitimate right of strikes in member states, but it is an issue that is to be addressed more broadly,” Itkonen said, responding to a question on airlines’ requests to overfly countries during strikes.

BRUSSELS — Friedrich Merz’s arrival as German chancellor in May rekindled the fading Franco-German love affair — and the lovebirds have already found a shared interest: killing Europe’s ethical supply chain dream. Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron joined forces this month to hobble new European Union rules aimed at boosting supply chain transparency, agreeing to mutual concessions that critics say have left the bill toothless.  The bilateral deal highlights a new era for the historical Franco-German relationship focused on a sharp pro-business agenda, some argue, thanks to a budding bromance between the two leaders. Adopted last year, the EU’s supply chain oversight law requires companies to police their supply chains for possible environmental and human rights violations. But the bill has yet to be implemented, having been selected as part of a whole set of EU rules currently subject to a massive simplification effort to cut the regulatory burden for businesses.  EU countries on Monday agreed on a dramatically watered-down version of the revolutionary rules in record time. Initially presented by the European Commission in February 2022, the new version — if endorsed by the EU as a whole — will only apply to a fraction of the European companies initially targeted. The new text “is possibly one of the first policy [deliveries] that is going to be restarting the Franco-German alliance,” said Alberto Alemanno, an EU law professor at HEC Paris. Amid escalating trade tensions and geopolitical turmoil, the European Union is on a mission to reinvent itself as a prosperous, pro-business, anti-red tape powerhouse. Macron and Merz are leading the charge in that mission. “It is a first success for the Franco-German couple,” said a French economy ministry official who was granted anonymity in line with the French government’s communication practices after the agreement among EU countries was announced.  That’s because Macron, a staunchly pro-business liberal, and Merz, an equally pro-business conservative, agreed on mutual concessions to make the text more palatable for the two countries, the same official explained. The affinity the two leaders share has not gone unnoticed. “There’s a bit of a honeymoon between Macron and Merz,” Alemanno said. “They really get along well because they have a very similar style of leadership. They are both very charismatic. They also say things that are quite unpopular, but they just say it.”  Last month, Macron told an audience of business executives that the due diligence directive ought “not just to be postponed for one year, but to be put off the table.” Emmanuel Macron told an audience of business executives that the due diligence directive ought “not just to be postponed for one year, but to be put off the table.” | Pool Photo by Benoit Tessier via EPA His comments followed a similar statement from Merz, who had called for a “complete repeal” of the law during a visit to Brussels.  As their leaders were making bold public statements about scrapping the rules altogether, behind the scenes the French and German delegations in Brussels negotiated to effectively hollow out the file. After the agreement was reached, Paris hailed the outcome as a joint win for Europe’s most powerful leaders, while Berlin stayed mum. “The German government will not publicly comment on statements made by other governments or information based on anonymous sources,” a German government spokesperson said. Civil society groups, meanwhile, question whether Europe’s supply chain oversight rules still make a difference. “We’re getting to the point of, is it even worth having this law?” said Richard Gardiner, interim head of EU policy at the ShareAction NGO, arguing that if “badly written” rules are then enshrined in law, companies will have no incentive to do better. A LONG TIME COMING The French and German positions come on the back of a tumultuous start to Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president, during which she pledged to answer EU leaders’ calls to cut red tape for business. One of the first concrete measures the new Commission took was an “omnibus” bill, an “unprecedented simplification effort” that watered down several green laws from the previous mandate, including the corporate sustainability reporting directive and the supply chain law. The Commission wanted these changes to be fast-tracked. “I have never seen them move this fast on a piece of legislation,” said ShareActions’s Gardiner, describing the policymaking process in Brussels as having gone from a “technocratic [process] to essentially a personality-based, knee-jerk reaction.” Among the key changes to the rules is the number of companies that will be impacted. While the Commission’s proposal was to exclude 80 percent of European companies from having to comply with both the sustainability reporting and the supply chain rules, EU countries ultimately backed a French proposal to limit the scope of the latter to companies with more than 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in net turnover. In other words, fewer than 1,000 European companies would be subject to them. Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron joined forces this month to hobble new European Union rules aimed at boosting supply chain transparency, agreeing to mutual concessions that critics say have left the bill toothless. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA And that’s what the French wanted. “I think that this alignment between France and Germany allowed [us] to progress,” said the French official quoted above. In particular, the French agreed to concessions on civil liability — a main concern of German companies, which did not want to be liable for breaches of the law at the EU level. In exchange, Berlin agreed to back the higher threshold that determines which companies are subject to the new rules to ensure they align with those that already exist in French law.  On the French side, there was a “prioritization of the topic of the threshold,” said a Parliament official familiar with the details. THE BACKSTORY Berlin especially has long been at the forefront of the political war against the supply chain oversight law, with liberal and conservative politicians turning their opposition into a core component of electoral politics at a time of economic downturn, warnings of de-industrialization and global trade wars.  Even well before the Commission presented its rules, Germany was pressing Brussels to follow its lead and exempt companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. Back in 2022 the bill was already falling short of what progressive lawmakers and green groups were requesting.  After all three EU institutions managed to clinch a deal in December 2023 — overcoming an attempt by center-right European People’s Party (EPP) lawmakers to kill the file, and having already agreed to carve out the financial sector to win France over — the horse-trading intensified. Germany’s liberals, back then the smallest party in the three-party coalition of former Chancellor Olaf Scholz, launched a last-ditch push to kill the heavily lobbied and controversial file altogether, despite major disagreements within the national coalition government. France and Italy both jumped on the bandwagon.  Despite all this, the measure made it through.   Now, the survival of EU supply chain oversight rules is part of the new coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Berlin. In principle, the agreement binds the German chancellor to protect the bill, albeit with a promise to trim the bureaucratic burden in the text. But tensions are simmering beneath the surface. Now, the survival of EU supply chain oversight rules is part of the new coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) in Berlin. | Filip Singer/EPA “Many people would have benefited from the law, but their voices were not loud enough — while the bureaucracy debate overshadowed the debate,” said one German government official, granted anonymity to speak freely about internal political dynamics.  THE FRENCH U-TURN Macron’s position was far less consistent than Merz’s. He performed a spectacular U-turn to become the No. 1 opponent of a text he and his governments had advocated, at least publicly. Having been one of the first countries to enact a national law banning human rights abuses and environmental breaches from supply chains, France initially cast itself as a top supporter of the text and made it a priority when it held the rotating Council presidency back in 2022. Then, last year, Paris piggybacked on Berlin’s opposition, requesting that the law apply to fewer companies. Fast forward to 2025, and the French have become fierce critics of the text. Earlier this year, POLITICO revealed that Paris had asked the European Commission to indefinitely delay the text. That was before Macron told a roomful of business CEOs gathered in Versailles from all over the world that the text should be thrown out altogether.  While the president’s shift is music to the ears of France’s industry lobbies, it has also triggered an internal revolt from his allies who warned against sacrificing green and anti-forced labor rules under pressure from business.  And unlike about a year ago, Berlin and Paris are facing barely any pushback.  Last year, the Greens and the Social Democrats in the former German coalition government voiced their opposition to Berlin’s attempts to kill the bill, before giving in to pressure from the liberals. Now, the Social Democrats co-governing with Merz’ conservative party are mostly quiet. On Wednesday, the SPD-led labor ministry finally broke its silence, saying it was in “favor of reducing the administrative burden on companies and at the same time effectively protecting human rights.” Calls to alleviate the burden for businesses, it seems, have become the new political consensus. “The whole narrative has gotten out of hand. And no one is still up against it,” Gardiner said. Marianne Gros and Antonia Zimmermann reported from Brussels, Giorgio Leali reported from Paris and Laura Hülsemann reported from Berlin.