Today, I saw this article about a EU proposal to cut profit for importers of militia-sponsering minerals in the Belgian newspaper “De Standaard”, maybe it’s interesting to someone here:
EU-voorstel om gewapende groepen opbrengst conflictmineralen te ontzeggen is ‘hypocriet’
Short summary:
On Tuesday, the commission international trade of the European parliament approved a law proposal that should keep profit from export of conflict minerals and metals from getting to armed militia.
Socialist and green fractions call it a “hypocrite proposal”.
The proposal is about conflict minerals from high-risk regions, like Congo.
Concretely, conditions are listed which have to be fulfilled by European importers if they want to present themself as “responsible importers”. A majority of the conservative EVP-fraction, the liberal ALDE and ECR, with, amongst others, the British Conservatives and NVA (Belgium) collaborated on the proposal.
Proponents say a system is created, letting consumers easily pick companies who comply, but critics point out that the proposal might not change too much, and might even have effects disrupting competition between European companies.
Probably the voting will be on 18th of May.
I hope this makes sense, I did a quick job. I imagine that other media sources also report on this matter…
