The NCP Procedure of the OECD Guidelines: Monitoring and RBC Improvement during the Follow-Up Step

The National Contact Point specific instance procedure of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-ment Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises is expected to contribute to improvements in responsible business conduct of multinational enterprises. The aim of this article is to ex-amine whether and how the Dutch National Contact Point uses its discretion, provided for the implementation of the procedure, to achieve this aim. To provide insight into this matter, an analytical framework based on Clark et al. (Dou-ble Bottom Line Project Report) and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights was developed and used to assess the information provided in statements of the Dutch National Contact Point procedures. This framework shows that monitoring is crucial for achieving improvements in responsible business conduct by multinational enterpris-es. Moreover, the analysis illustrates that the Dutch National Contact Point hardly uses its discretion to monitor the results of mediation during the procedures. Consequently, responsible business conduct improvement during the procedures analysed in this article has not been clearly secured. This is largely attributed to the fact that not all agreements and recommendations of mediation had been implemented by the end of the procedures. Furthermore, this research in-dicates that the National Contact Point procedure should continue until a multinational enterprise has taken all the necessary efforts to meet the results of mediation. It concludes that if the National Contact Point does not assess this effort by way of monitoring during the procedure, there will be continued uncertainty regarding the actual improvements in responsible business conduct approaches of multinational enterprises.