The Council on Ethics recommends that the exclusion of Atal SA/Poland (Atal) from investment by the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) be revoked.
Atal is a Polish property development company. On 25 August 2017, the Council on Ethics recommended that Atal be excluded from the GPFG due to an unacceptable risk that the company contributed to serious human rights violations, including forced labour, through employing a subcontractor which used North Korean workers at Atal’s construction sites.
In 2018, the EU transposed into EU law a UN Security Council resolution demanding that all workers from North Korea be repatriated. In December 2019, Poland reported to the Security Council that there were no North Korean workers in Poland. The Council on Ethics thus finds that there are no longer grounds for maintaining the 2017 recommendation.
The Council on Ethics submitted its recommendation 25 November 2020. Norges Bank published its decision to revoke the exclusion of the company on 3 March 2021.
Please find the Council’s recommendation here.