39 Taiwan Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association umentation needs to be kept at least seven years after its creation; 1.1.8 Far-reaching rights have been granted to the competent authorities in any case of non-compliance including the right to enter and inspect the premises of a company, to search its computers, etc., etc. The respective company must then fully cooperate with such authorities. BAFA as competent authority is entitled to subpoena persons and impose a penalty of up to 50,000 EUR if a company does not follow-up properly and does not take a required action. Intentional or negligent violations of the due diligence obligations can be punished with a fine of up to EUR 8 million. If the company has an average annual turnover of more than EUR 400 million, the fine can be up to two percent of the company’s average annual turnover. 1.1.9 To detect violations of the Supply Chain Act, BAFA has come up with an online complaints form in four languages (German, English, French and Spanish), where pending or already occurred violations of the Supply Chain Act can be reported, even anonymously by a whistleblower if needed. 1.2 The EU Supply Chain Directive: 1.2.1 Germany has been the very first EU Member State out of the 27 to enact a national supply chain law and did not wait for the EU lawmaking bodies, i.e. the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to issue such piece of legislation. This caused lots of criticism, but the current German government and here in particular the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green Party did not much listen to those critics. 1.2.2 The EU legislators continued with their EUwide initiative with the result that on July 5 of this year, the European Supply Chain Directive/ESCD was published in the Official Journal of the European Union (Directive (EU) 2024/1760). This Directive must now be transposed by the 27 member states into their national law by July 2026. Quite likely this will take place in Germany by more or less streamlining the GSCDDA to make it compliant with this European piece of legislation. The application of the ESCD will gradually become mandatory for companies in the EU: • 3 years after entry into force for companies with more than 5,000 employees and a global net turnover of more than 1,500 million EUR; • 4 years after entry into force for companies with more than 3,000 employees and a worldwide net turnover of more than 900 million EUR, and • 5 years after entry into force for companies with more than 1,000 employees and a worldwide
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