Consultative meetings to promote the analytical report

Consultative meetings of country delegates to promote the analytical report of OECD Guidelines For Multinational Enterprises were held from January 19 to February 8, 2022

On January 19, February 1 and February 8, 2022, the Secretariat of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (hereinafter – OECD) held consultative meetings to promote the analytical report of OECD Guidelines For Multinational Enterprises with representatives of interested countries. The meetings were chaired by the Chairman of OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct Christine Kaufmann and Allan Jorgensen, Head of OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct.

More than 70 participants joined the meetings: OECD officials, representatives of national contact points of the USA, France, England, Norway, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Chile, Canada and other countries of the world.

Participants actively expressed their position on the issues raised at the meetings.

On the part of Kazakhstan, representatives of the Kazakhstan office of National Contact Point (Economic Research Institute JSC) took part in the meetings.

Consultative meetings were held for three days via videoconference:

1. Seminar I (January 19) “Discussion of problems and questions”.

2. Seminar II (February 1) “Discussion of institutions”.

3. Seminar III (February 8) ”Discussion of implementation”.

On January 19, the issues raised in the analytical report of OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises were identified. All participants who joined the seminar were given opportunity to take part in online surveys in real time, according to the results of which the participants actively discussed their choice of a potential scenario (political statement, clarification of existing recommendations, new recommendations).

On February 1, a discussion was held on the supposed advantages, feasibility and comparative advantage of possible scenarios with concrete examples. In addition, extensive issues of National Contact Points in the world were covered: powers, functional equivalence, procedural consistency and other issues. The seminar participants also took part in the voting and expressed their opinions on the aspects raised in the report.

On February 8, the OECD Guidelines were reviewed in a broader context, ecosystem concept, main opportunities and achievements of the report were revealed, and an overview of possible action options on specific issues identified in the report was made.

In conclusion, Christine Kaufmann outlined the need to promote National Contact Points and the OECD Guidelines.