 Mae'r meddwl yn gwneud bod hi'n gweithio i'w cymdeithasol y cyfrifas yma yn y ffostafol, ond mae'r cynllun o'r ffostafol o'r cynllun o'r cyfrifas yma hynny'n gweithio, ond mae'r cynllun o'r cyfrifas yma efo'r cynllun o'r cynllun o'r cyfrifas yma mewn i'r byd a nad y gallwn y bwysigio ymlaen o'r croesau ymlaen o'r cyfrifas yma ac yn ystod o ddechrau'r ddechrau'r cyfnodol yma i ddoddiadu'r cyfnodol ar hynny. Yn ymddi'r unrhyw o'r ffordd yma, a'r ffordd yma, yn y ffordd yma yn y blynyddiadu, ac mae'n cyfnodol yn ymddiadu'r ymddiadu, dwi'n gweithio'r ddoddiadu'r cyfnodol, rydyn fod o'n ei cleif edrych iddynt yn digwydd. The initiatives I want to explore here with you, there are a pairs in particular, first thought emerging from case law and in particular civic litigation, and the second type from the legislator. Looking at human rights due diligence and civic litigation to begin with, Here I'm going to talk about, focus on two cases only given the time constraints, which is a Dutch case and an English case, and these cases involve the liability of the power and company for the acts and emissions of their subsidiaries. So, starting with the UK, so I'm going to talk about the Vedanta case, which is a very recent case, concerning proceedings that were brought in England by Zambian residents against an English company, so against both the English power and company and the Zambian subsidiary for the damage that they had suffered as a result of the environmental pollution caused by discharges from a copper mine that was owned and operated by the subsidiary. In particular, the claimants were as sustaining that the pollution of the waterways had affected their livelihoods because they relied on these waterways as their primary source of clean water for bathing, for cooking, for cleaning, for irrigation of the crops, for finding fresh fish, etc. One of the preliminary issues that arose in that case was the one of jurisdiction. Now, in particular, the claim against the power and company was brought on the basis of the recast process regulation, which provides an article for that person, don't miss our member state, shall be sued in that member state. The claims against the Zambian subsidiary, on the other hand, were brought on the basis of English law, and in particular paragraph 3.1 of the practice direction 6B, which basically allows claims to be served out of the jurisdiction with the permission of the court where there is between the claimants and the definite a real issue to be tried, and where the claimant wishes to serve the claim against another person who is a necessary or proper party to that claim. So, in other words, what that disposition entails is basically it potentially enables claims against non-EU domiciled definite to be brought and to be tried in England together with claims against EU domiciled definite when these two conditions are fulfilled. So, the defendants were arguing that, in fact, the claimants were by relying on this legislation were abusing procedural law because, in fact, the claim against the power and company just didn't have any chance of being successful. The High Court held that the claimants could bring their case in the UK. The definite appeal on the ground that the entire focus of the case was in Zambia, so this is where the Alex Taught was committed, the damage occurred, this is where the claimants reside, this is where the subsidiary is domiciled and the Zambian law was a little applicable. And so, therefore, the defendants were submitting that Zambia would be a more appropriate forum to hear the claim. They also said that the claim against the power and company was just an illegitimate hook being used to permit the claims to be brought in the UK, which would otherwise have nothing to do with the UK. The claimants, on the other hand, sustained that there was a real issue between themselves and the power and company and also that access to justice issues in Zambia would, in any case, suggest that the case should be tried in the UK. So, in order to decide on these issues, the judge had to decide on the likelihood that the duty of care would be owed by the power and company to the claimants for the acts of its subsidiary. In order to demonstrate the existence of a duty of care, the claimants used various elements and one of them were the various public statements that the power and company had made regarding its commitment to address environmental risks and the technical shortcomings of the subsidiary mining operation in Zambia. When analysing the well-established case law on establishing the duty of care of the power and company, Lord Justice Simon, who was the judge in the Court of Appeal, found that the claim against the power and company was arguable. So, he looked at all the free-fall test established in the Capharic case, he looked at the indicia from the Chandler case and the various case law, and obviously this was just a preliminary issue, so he didn't give an answer on the substantial facts of the case, but simply said that there was a serious question to be tried which should not be disposed of similarly. Now moving on to, I'll come back to that case in a little bit, moving on to the Netherlands. Here we'd like to talk about the Shell case in the Netherlands. This case concerns disputes that arose out of old spills which resulted in environmental damage that affected wide areas of lands and water as was the health and livelihood of the local communities in the dieted Niger Delta, as a result of which four Nigerian fishermen and farmers brought a claim in the Netherlands for compensation against Shell. Again, similarly, issues of jurisdiction arose, the claim against the power and company was just as in the Vedanta case based on, well this one, the Brussels one regulation, the old one, and the claim against a Nigerian subsidiary was based on Dutch law, Dutch national law in particular Article 7 of the Dutch Court of Civil Procedure which allows connected claim to be heard by the same forum. So, not dissimilar to the one to the English law that I mentioned earlier. Again, here Shell was sustaining that the claimants were abusing procedural law and that their strategy of bringing the claim against a power and company was actually just a device that was used cynically to bring claims that would otherwise have just no connection whatsoever with the European territory. And they were arguing about the claims against a power and company were bound to fail. So again, the judge had to decide on the likelihood that a claim against a power and company could be awarded. The claimants sustained in particular, in support of their claim, but the power and company exercised a high degree of control and direction of a Nigerian subsidiary, but it owed them a duty of care and that he had breached that duty of care by failing to ensure that the old licks were effectively cleaned up and by failing to take appropriate measures to address what they considered was a well-known systemic problem of its operation in Nigeria. Now, in first instance, the Dutch forum rejected the claims of cancer power and company on the grounds that under Nigerian law there was no general duty of care and power and companies to prevent vestibularies for inflicting damage on others through their business operations. But in a very interesting decision of the Court of Appeal of the Egg on the 18th of December 2015, the court reversed that decision and said that it couldn't be ruled out in advance but a power and company made certain circumstances be liable for damages resulting from acts and omissions of its subsidiary. The Court of Appeal said that considering the foreseeable serious consequences of the old spills to the local environment from a potential spills source, it couldn't be ruled out that the power and company would be expected to take an interest in preventing the spills. But I think that's the most interesting point of the decision here it added. The more so if the company has made the prevention of environmental damage by the activities of group companies as spare head and is to a certain degree actively involved in and managing the business operations of the companies. So here it's particularly interesting to see how the voluntary commitments adopted by Shell is used against them and the power and company's duty of diligence is somewhat enhanced by these corporate social responsibility commitments voluntarily adopted by the power and company. The Court of Appeal then went on to ask a number of questions that should be taken into consideration in the substantive, when deciding on the substantive case, looking at the standards that are expected from the power and company in the monitoring of the activities of the subsidiary. And what we see in this different test is a very high threshold that is expected from the power and company. And the Court to conclude that it couldn't be ruled out that the power and company couldn't be liable for damages resulting from the conduct of its subsidiary and that the claims against the power and company and the subsidiary were closely connected and therefore should be heard together. So here we see a very different, sorry, quite a similar decision that the one that was taken in the Vedentech is in the UK. It is however in sharp contrast with the English case on Shells on the same facts, but this is a case brought by over 42,000 Nigerian citizens against Shell. For the environmental damage caused by the oil spill, as I was brought in the UK. Now in that case, in the UK case, the High Court had considered that the power and company did not owe a duty of care to claimants. In particular, Justice Fraser found that the freefall test that was set out in the Caparo case in particular with regards to foreseeability, proximity and reasonableness was just not satisfied. That the relationship between the ultimate, what they call the ultimate holding company and the claimants was just not a close one. The power and company was not better placed than the subsidiary in respect of the harm and therefore it was unfair to unfair but because of that future the subsidiary would rely upon the power and company to avoid the harm. So on the 14th of February 2018, so very recently the Court of Appeal rejected the claimants appeal in that case in the UK with a majority opinion stating that the claim against the power and company were bound to fail and that it was just not arguable that the power and company owed them a duty of care. So same reasoning that the one, the same conclusion that the one that Justice Fraser had reached but through a different reasoning here, which Amnist International warned that was potentially setting a very potentially dangerous precedence inviting UK based corporations to have free reign to abusive and rights of the seas. It also completely denied the economic reality of the unity of the various entities of multinational corporations by just focusing and strictly adhering to the separation of the legal personality principles and in my opinion perhaps even more importantly it negates the regulatory functions of European courts as home states forum. Now I'm running out of time so I will just briefly mention because earlier I mentioned there are two initiatives, the case law initiatives and the legislative initiatives to reinforce to make human rights de-deligious mandatory and this is just I wanted to briefly mention the French law on the duty of de-leges which requires large French multinational corporations to put in place, make public and implement a vigilance plan in order to identify risks and prevent serious harms to human rights and environment. And this is very interesting law because it imposes this duty of de-leges responsibilities on power and company not only in relation to their subsidiaries but also in relation to their suppliers and they must in order to make sure that they are there to responsible business standards wherever they operate. So what we've been seeing through that, this case law that I've presented and through this legislation, I just mentioned the French one but there is a similar Swiss initiative going on at the moment, is a shift from soft law to hard law in order to make human rights de-deligious more meaningful and improve corporate accountability. Thank you very much.