Four overlapping regulatory frameworks are making ethical labour risk a market access and legal compliance question — in addition to, not instead of, a reputational one. SME importers have an approximately 18-month window, from a June 2026 planning perspective, to build proportionate controls before the EU Forced Labour Regulation applies on 14 December 2027. In our previous edition,, we examined how the social licence to operate — the informal community-level authority that