Business And Human Rights In Europe

Transnational business activities are important drivers of growth for developing and the least developed countries. However, they can also negatively impact the enjoyment of human rights. In some cases, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have even been accused of grave human rights abuses in the territory of the states where their subsidiaries operate. Since the parent companies of many MNEs are incorporated under the law of European states, those countries’ domestic law and the European legal framework play a crucial role in establishing how their activities should be conducted – also throughout their supply chains – and which remedies will be available when corporate human rights violations occur. In recent years, the European Union, the Council of Europe and their Member States have been adopting policies and legislation to ensure respect for human rights by businesses and have developed a body of related case law. These legal instruments can be considered the European responses to the challenges posed at international-law level, and they constitute the focus of research of this book. Through its collected chapters – written by scholars and practitioners under the direction of the editor, Angelica Bonfanti – the book identifies the European solutions to the business and human rights international legal issues, provides an overall assessment of their effectiveness, and examines their potential evolution.

This publication is an essential guide for general counsel and law firms to the changing world of human rights and its importance for global business. The book highlights the growing relationship between human rights and global business and the developing international focus on the issue, particularly as a result of recent United Nations initiatives. Providing detailed commentary from leading international law firms, this first edition focuses on the legal accountability and due diligence responsibilities of corporates based in many of the world's most developed jurisdictions for human rights compliance by their overseas operations.

Legal Sources in Business and Human Rights takes stock of different aspects of Business and Human Rights practice in order to identify and explore some dynamics that are driving the evolution of the legal sources of international and EU law in the field of B&HRs.

EU commitment to human rights policies has grown following the Lisbon Treaty. Taking stock of those developments, this book describes the framework, actors, policies, and strategies of human rights across the EU and how their impact is felt. Contributed to by scholars from across the EU, this provides an in-depth and holistic view of the issues.

Resumen del editor: "The increasing globalization and the restructuring of the European legal framework by the Treaty of Lisbon are important factors to suggest that the traditional separation of spheres between taxation and human rights should be revisited. This book examines the issues surrounding the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on the guarantee and enforcement of human rights in the area of EU (tax) law and explores the possible development and potential impact of human rights in the field of taxation in this age of global law."

This book, through various differently oriented chapters, tries to give an insight on how the European Union and its multilevel model of governance must try to strike a balance between diverging interests and priorities. In particular, the EU and the European states (including the CoE's Members) should implement all possible actions to protect individuals' dignity, along with other important sustainable community priorities such as public health, sustainable development and the protection of the environment, social values, and fundamental freedoms. At the same time the regulations and practices should be able to build-up an appropriate business environment that is sufficiently friendly to corporate activity to permit companies to produce growth and create new job opportunities, without affecting any of the individual substantial rights and liberties.The book contains chapters providing an overview and comparison of different existing practices with constructive suggestions for future policy-making, as well as chapters dealing with more specific issues related to business and human rights.Overall, this book attempts not only to summarize the outcomes of the most intensely debated challenges; it also tries to provide constructive criticism and valuable suggestions for the future for policymakers and legislators to move forward. Business and human rights hold many complex and intricate relations, as well as the interests of subjects who do not have an equal social and legal position. All these diverging values and opposing concerns require a very delicate and diplomatic approach in order to bring clarity and binding security for all the involved stakeholders. Nevertheless, the future outlook of the field looks promising, mainly due to the large amount of documents, frameworks, opinions, and bilateral agreements, but also thanks to the incessant and sometimes constructively obstinate activity of institutions, and national and international courts. This book has the potential to also be one of the sources for fostering incremental positive development in order to consolidate more human conditions and values in the global economy, free-trade and business, which should be primarily for humans. Not only for the privileged ones, but for all human beings.

More than ten years after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, this book critically reviews the achievements, limits and next frontiers of business and human rights following the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ trichotomy. The UN Guiding Principles acted as a catalyst for hitherto unprecedented regulatory and judicial developments. The monograph by Macchi proposes a functionalist reading of the state’s duty to regulate the transnational activities of corporations in order to protect human rights and adopts a holistic approach to the corporate responsibility to respect, arguing that environmental and climate due diligence are inherent dimensions of human rights due diligence. In the volume emerging legislations are assessed on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, as well as the potential and limitations of a binding international treaty on business and human rights. The book also reviews groundbreaking litigation against transnational corporations, such as Lungowe v. Vedanta or Milieudefensie v. Shell, for their human rights and climate change impacts. The book is primarily targeted at academic and non-academic legal experts, as well as at researchers and students looking at business and human rights issues through the lenses of legal studies (particularly international law and European law), political sciences, business ethics, and management. Additionally, it should also find a readership among practitioners working in the public or private sector (consultants, CSR officers, legal officers, etc.) willing to familiarize themselves with the expanding areas of liability, financial and reputational risks connected to the social and environmental impacts of global supply chains. Chiara Macchi is currently Lecturer in Law at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands.

The place of human rights in EU law has been a central issue in contemporary debates about the character of the European Union as a political organisation. This comprehensive and timely Handbook explores the principles underlying the development of fundamental rights norms and the way such norms operate in the case law of the Court of Justice. Leading scholars in the field discuss both the effect of rights on substantive areas of EU law and the role of EU institutions in protecting them.

The capacity to abuse, or in general affect the enjoyment of human, labour and environmental rights has risen with the increased social and economic power that multinational companies wield in the global economy. At the same time, it appears that it is difficult to regulate the activities of multinational companies in such a way that they conform to international human, labour and environmental rights standards. This has partially to do with the organization of companies into groups of separate legal persons, incorporated in different states, as well as with the complexity of the corporate supply chain. Absent a business and human rights treaty, a more coherent legal and policy approach is required. Faced with the challenge of how to effectively access the right to remedy in the European Union for human rights abuses committed by EU companies in non-EU states, a diverse research consortium of academic and legal institutions was formed. The consortium, coordinated by the Globernance Institute for Democratic Governance, became the recipient of a 2013 Civil Justice Action Grant from the European Commission Directorate General for Justice. A mandate was thus issued for research, training and dissemination so as to bring visibility to the challenge posed and moreover, to provide some solutions for the removal of barriers to judicial and non-judicial remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states. The project commenced in September 2014 and over the course of two years the consortium conducted research along four specific lines in parallel with various training sessions across EU Member States. The research conducted focused primarily on judicial remedies, both jurisdictional barriers and applicable law barriers; non-judicial remedies, both to company-based grievance. The results of this research endeavour make up the content of this report whose aim is to provide a scholarly foundation for policy proposals by identifying specific challenges relevant to access to justice in the European Union and to provide recommendations on how to remove legal and practical barriers so as to provide access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses in non-EU states.

Following implementation of the 1998 Act, companies, as well as individuals, could have direct access to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. This will give business a powerful new weapon in challenging the actions of government and other public authorities and bodies.