This symposium has called for critical assessments of recent legal instruments dealing with the growing relevance of human rights and environmental considerations in the context of transnational corporate operations. With a view that spans from national to regional and international arenas, a diverse range of contributions have focused on diverse legal challenges emerging in a multilayered legal order. At the EU level, academic perspectives have addressed the hurdles of the new compromise proposal for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive in the Council of the EU (March 2024) and the new EU Environmental Criminal Directive (May 2024), which include an ecocide clause as a threshold crime. Regional approaches have included the most recent activity of regional courts, such as the African Court of Human Rights. Shifting towards new trends in international law, contributions have engaged with the extraterritorial reach of corporate due diligence obligations and the role that the new 2021 ecocide proposal can play in the corporate context.
Publishing simultaneously on the Völkerrechtsblog and Jean Monnet Saar, we thus offer an exchange between legal perspectives in Public International Law and European law.
The first contribution that will go online on Völkerrechtsblog is that of Rachel Killean. Senior Lecturer in Sydney Law School, her research focuses on multidisciplinary responses to violence with a focus on transitional justice, victims’ rights, and environmental harm. Titled What role can the crime of ecocide play in the corporate context? her piece addresses the potential of ecocide law to target corporate violations.. Given the spread of the 2021 Independent Expert Panel definition with national bills submitted in many jurisdictions, academic reflections have also started to take shape. By focusing on the concept of individual deterrence, Killean considers the potential of and barriers to a crime of ecocide in driving corporate change.
The second blogpost is of Alessandra Aceti, PhD student in International and European Law at Bocconi University researching transnational environmental crimes and corporate liability. In Transnational Environmental Crime and Extraterritorial Corporate Liability: Exploring the Potential and Assessing the Challenges, Aceti examines viable legal bases to hold EU-based parent companies accountable for environmental crimes committed abroad by their subsidiaries and business partners, ultimately calling for strengthening current legal and policy responses.
Third, we propose Do No Significant Harm: Moving the Agenda beyond Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence? by Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez, PI ERC Curiae Virides, Brussels School of Governance (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and Charles Deberdt. Their contribution discusses the role of the principle of the ‘Do No Significant Harm’ (DNSH) legal standard in shaping sustainable practices across global value chains and production networks in the EU and global context.
The next contribution by Charlotte Dierickx-Visschers is titled ‘Mining the Green Deal: Indigenous Rights and Climate Policy in Multilevel Conflict’ examines how Sweden’s and the EU’s green transition policies prioritize mineral extraction for climate goals at the expense of Sámi indigenous rights, despite existing international human rights obligations. It calls for binding inclusion of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and stronger indigenous protections in EU and Swedish legal frameworks to ensure a just and equitable climate transition.
Finally, Eoin Jackson’s paper “Could the Road from Arusha Lead to London?” explores how the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) could advance corporate climate accountability by articulating state obligations to regulate corporate emissions and potentially extending human rights duties directly to corporations. It further argues that such jurisprudence could open pathways for transnational litigation, especially in the UK, linking African-led normative leadership with enforcement capacity in Global North courts.
The first contribution to be published on Jean Monnet Saar is authored by Grzegorz Paciecha, a Master’s student in European and International Business Law who is also pursuing studies in Information Law and Legal Tech at LMU Munich. His article, The Contested Soul of Corporate Accountability: Navigating the CSDDD’s Ambition and Its Political Unravelling, examines the evolution of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) as a central pillar of the EU’s shift from voluntary corporate social responsibility to mandatory accountability. It explores the directive’s ambitious design, its fragile political foundations, and the emerging debates over the future of its enforcement architecture.
The next piece is contributed by Nicolò Andreotti, a PhD candidate in International and EU Law at the University of Padua, specialising in the intersection of international investment law, natural resources, and environmental regulation. In his article, Fast-Tracking the Green Transition in the EU, he analyses how the Renewable Energy Directive (RED III), intended to accelerate the green transition, may inadvertently weaken corporate accountability for human rights and environmental impacts. The piece highlights the tension between procedural efficiency and substantive safeguards, calling for stronger integration of due diligence and human rights obligations into the EU’s climate framework.
The second week of the symposium on Jean Monnet Saar starts with a contribution by Ghaith Alkurdi, an LL.M. candidate at the Europa-Institut, Saarland University. His article, The Stateless Worker Problem: Linking Nationality Law Discrimination to EU Corporate Due Diligence, explores how gender-discriminatory nationality laws create stateless populations excluded from formal labor markets, exposing a major blind spot in corporate governance and due diligence frameworks. By linking this issue to the CSDDD, the article calls for expanding the directive’s scope to address nationality-based exclusion as a core human-rights risk.
The fourth contribution is written by Ann-Charlotte Neumann, an LL.M./Master II graduate in comparative law (German/French) with a specialization in International and European Law. Her article, Rethinking Corporate Social Responsibility in Times of Armed Conflict, introduces the emerging concept of “geopolitical responsibility,” highlighting how corporate activities can shape or intensify international conflicts. Building on existing soft law frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles and the OECD Guidelines, it argues that binding instruments like the CSDDD still overlook this geopolitical dimension, calling for stronger integration of conflict-sensitive due diligence into corporate accountability frameworks.
Finally, the symposium concludes with a joint contribution by Mustafa Rajkotwala, a commercial lawyer based in Mumbai, and Shamik Datta, a commercial litigation and arbitration lawyer also based in Mumbai. Their article, Environmental Due Diligence as a Precondition to Treaty Protection: Reframing International Investment Law Through Corporate Governance Norms, argues that environmental due diligence should become a mandatory precondition for investment treaty protection. Building on the ICJ’s 2025 Climate Advisory Opinion, it calls for linking investor rights to environmental compliance, reshaping investment law into a framework of reciprocal responsibility aligned with global sustainability goals.
