Duty of vigilance: Yves Rocher tells court it had drawn up ‘plans’

On Thursday, the Paris Judicial Court considered a potential breach of the duty of vigilance by the Yves Rocher cosmetics group, which has been taken to court over alleged failures by one of its Turkish subcontractors to respect workers’ rights.

The Rocher group — the parent company of Yves Rocher — “could not have been unaware,” according to François Lafforgue, the lawyer for the associations that have taken the French group to court.

Yves Rocher is accused by the associations Sherpa and ActionAid France, the trade union Petrol-İş, and 81 former Turkish employees of having failed in its duty of vigilance towards Kosan Kozmetik, the group’s Turkish subsidiary until 2024.

The group is accused of “repression of trade union activity, gender discrimination and harm to employees’ health and safety,” according to the associations behind the legal action.

Since March 2017, France’s duty of vigilance law has required its largest companies, including with regard to their foreign operations, to publish vigilance plans to prevent, in particular, risks linked to their activities and serious infringements of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Lafforgue cited “constant pressure,” “repeated workplace accidents,” and “systemic discrimination against women,” suffered by employees of the Turkish subsidiary.

But for the Rocher group’s lawyer, Olivier Attias, “you have to look at the context at the time. Until 2020, companies were in something of a grey area on these issues.”

Attias conceded that the Rocher group only published its vigilance plan in 2020, and not before.

“But the plans had been drawn up”, which “is not disputed; otherwise there would have been complaints of forgery,” he asserted.

For Lafforgue, by contrast, publication of the plan in 2020 proves that it did not exist beforehand.

The Rocher group’s lawyer also argued that it was “not possible, as early as 2017, to have a precise snapshot” of the entire value chain across all the group’s subsidiaries.

However, he maintained that it had been planned “to gradually extend the vigilance plan,” adding that as soon as Yves Rocher “became aware of the difficulties” in Turkey, “it put things right, with a number of measures very similar to those recommended under the duty of vigilance.”

The decision has been reserved and will be handed down on March 12, 2026.