The indirect horizontal effect of human and fundamental rights has dominated European constitutional practice. In recent years, fractures have appeared in its face in courts and in regulatory practice. The EU has introduced multiple legislative initiatives that have pushed the rights towards apparent direct horizontal effect.

This article analyses the AI Act and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive as examples of a novel human and fundamental rights strategy. The article argues that the instruments first weaken the rights and then deploy them to normatively guide and condition intra-firm sense-plan-act cycles. The rights first create adverse human rights impacts and fundamental rights risks to serve as objects of concern in corporate information processing. The planning and acting stages transport the rights into real-world reduction in human and fundamental rights violations. While on its face weak, the novel strategy is likely an adaptation to political pressures, but contains the seeds of a possible progressive end-game.