Why companies must reflect on their purchasing practices now: Aligning the UTP and the CSDDD

The EU’s regulatory landscape is shifting, and companies across sectors are being asked to confront a long‑standing but often overlooked truth: purchasing practices matter. They shape working conditions, influence environmental outcomes, and determine whether suppliers, especially smaller producers, can operate sustainably.

This message came through clearly in the recent webinar ‘How to Align the Unfair Trading Practices Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive’, hosted by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ). The session brought together policy experts to unpack how the Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) intersect, and why companies need to start reflecting on their purchasing practices now.

Two directives, one core problem

The UTP Directive, adopted in 2019, was designed to address power imbalances in agricultural and food supply chains. The Commission’s 2013 Green Paper had already identified unfair trading practices as a systemic problem across multiple sectors, agriculture, textiles, and beyond, but the first legislative intervention focused solely on agri‑food.

It bans practices such as late payments, last‑minute cancellations, unilateral contract changes, commercial retaliation, and misuse of trade secrets. These are classified as ‘black’ UTPs, meaning they are always prohibited. Other practices fall into a ‘grey’ category and are only allowed if the supplier has explicitly agreed to them in a written contract.

The CSDDD, adopted in 2024, and amended in early 2026 through the EU's Omnibus 'simplification' package, which narrowed its scope to companies with over 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in worldwide turnover and pushed back application to 2029, takes a different approach. Instead of banning specific behaviours, it requires companies to identify, prevent, mitigate, and remedy human rights and environmental harms across their operations and chains of activities. Crucially, even in its amended form, it recognises that purchasing practices can be a root cause of harm, from wage suppression and excessive overtime to unsafe working conditions and environmental degradation.

In other words, while the UTP Directive focuses on fairness in commercial transactions, the CSDDD focuses on responsibility for human rights outcomes. But both share a foundational principle: buyers have responsibility for the conditions they create.

Purchasing practices: the bridge between UTP and CSDDD

Throughout the webinar, speakers emphasised that purchasing practices are the natural point of alignment between the two directives. The UTP Directive bans harmful commercial behaviours; the CSDDD requires companies to assess and adapt purchasing practices where they contribute to harm. For example, a retailer that cancels orders at short notice may violate the UTP Directive and also create human rights risks that fall under the CSDDD.

This alignment becomes especially clear in the agri‑food sector, where the CSDDD includes a dedicated recital recognising the importance of tackling harmful purchasing practices and price pressures. It calls on large food processors and retailers to adapt their purchasing practices and contribute to living wages and incomes for suppliers. This is a significant shift. It means companies must move beyond supplier audits and codes of conduct and examine how their own commercial decisions, pricing, lead times, forecasting, contract terms, shape risk. It also means that silence from suppliers is no longer a sign of safety. As the webinar highlighted, most UTP complaints come from only four Member States. The absence of complaints elsewhere does not mean the absence of harm, only the absence of reporting. Purchasing practices also provide important signals for risk identification, especially where supplier data is limited or difficult to obtain.

The CSDDD changes that dynamic. Companies are expected to proactively identify risks, not wait for suppliers to speak up.

Why alignment matters now

Three themes from the webinar stood out:

1. Silence does not mean absence of harm. The UTP Directive allows suppliers to file anonymous complaints, but most do not. Under the CSDDD, companies must actively look for risks — including those created by their own purchasing behaviour.
2. The UTP Directive offers a ready‑made typology of harmful practices. Even though it applies only to agri‑food, its list of abusive practices provides a practical framework for companies in other sectors to evaluate their own purchasing behaviour.

As Jorge Conesa, Managing Director of FTAO, put it: "The UTP Directive provides a ready-made typology of abusive purchasing practices that are prohibited for buyers in the agri-food sector. This framework could help companies beyond the agri-food sector meet their CSDDD obligations to identify and assess actual and potential adverse impacts, by offering a strong starting point for evaluating their purchasing practices."

3. The UTP Directive is under revision. The Commission is reviewing the directive, with proposals expected later this year. One major topic under discussion is whether to ban purchasing below the cost of production, a practice closely linked to living income challenges. The revision could also introduce safeguards against irresponsible disengagement (“cut and run”), addressing gaps left by the CSDDD’s diluted provisions.

The CSDDD itself is also still taking shape. The Commission is consulting on implementation guidelines until 14 August, a chance for companies and stakeholders to shape how the directive works in practice. ETI is responding, drawing on members' experience of what makes due diligence effective on the ground.

Taken together, the two processes are complementary: the UTP revision could harden protections, on below-cost purchasing and responsible disengagement, where the CSDDD's provisions were weakened during the Omnibus negotiations, while the CSDDD's guidelines will shape how purchasing practices are treated in due diligence.

Companies that begin aligning now will be better prepared for both directives, and for future EU legislation that will likely follow the same logic. And this isn't only an EU story. While only the largest UK companies with substantial EU turnover fall directly in scope, far more will feel the CSDDD's effects as suppliers and business partners of in-scope companies, and the same logic increasingly shapes the debate on UK due diligence legislation.

How ETI can support companies in this shift

In this context, companies might be looking for practical ways to understand and improve their purchasing practices.

At ETI, we support companies in rethinking how sourcing decisions shape human rights outcomes. Over the past years, responsible purchasing has become a core part of our wider human rights due diligence work, and we’ve been helping members test what this looks like in real supply chains.

Through the Learning and Implementation Community (LIC) and the Apparel & Textiles (A&T) peer learning series, apparel and textile companies have analysed their purchasing practices and trialled improvements with suppliers. We’ve worked directly with manufacturing partners to understand how forecasting, costing, and communication affect working conditions.

This work has also expanded across food supply chains — including bananas, shrimp and fresh produce — where companies and suppliers are exploring how purchasing practices can support more predictable, fair and sustainable working environments.

Across these projects, one thing is clear: purchasing practices have a direct influence on working conditions and supplier stability. ETI can support open space for these conversations and work with suppliers and trade unions to develop practical, credible pathways forward.

If you want to explore what responsible purchasing looks like in practice, explore our resources below.