 So good afternoon. Thank you, Nicola, for the introduction. It's a pleasure for me to be here and an honor to address you on this important matter. As Nicola said, I work with the International Commission of Jurists. It's a non-governmental organization, an international organization composed of jurists, judges, lawyers, and law professors. And our objective, our mission, is to promote international human rights more generally through the mechanisms of the rule of law. We are headquartered in Geneva, and we have regional offices as well. Just for those who don't know the ICJ, that's what the ICJ stands for. It's not only International Court of Justice, it's the International Commission of Jurists as well. So let me first, I think congratulations are in order. Definitely, I think you have done an excellent work on this research project for all those who are involved. The global nuns, I started the name Institute, and all the other researchers and university, all the groups that were involved into this project. I should express my congratulations and gratitude for these interesting, very relevant set of results and recommendations. I think they would be very much appreciated and also paid attention to in the context of global debates on this issue in particular. Before I go to discuss the questions or the different possible avenues or different steps for the future, I would like to highlight as well a few of your recommendations that I see particularly interesting, relevant and pertinent. And sometimes also ambitious in certain respects. In two areas, in the area of jurisdiction, an expansion of jurisdiction, and in the area of known judicial project or company-based grievance mechanisms. So in the first place in jurisdiction, you highlight or recommend the extension of European courts jurisdiction over the subsidiaries of European-based domicile businesses in claims that are connected to a claim against the European company. Another recommendation focuses on the expansion of the jurisdiction to cases concerning not necessarily domicile companies in Europe, but other companies when there is no other forum or tribunal that will guarantee a fair trial. But at the same time, the claims are sufficiently connected or there is sufficient close connection with a European state. I see these two recommendations particularly interesting and relevant that correlate with some other recommendations that we were discussing in other forum. Until last year, I was participating in a working group in the Council of Europe, and that the issue finally at the beginning of this year, a set of recommendations, recommendation 2016-3, on filling the gaps of the implementation of the guiding principles in Council of Europe. Council of Europe in particular is relevant because it covers the membership of the Council of Europe is larger than the European Union, including Russia and several Eastern European or CIS countries. The International Law Associations of Sofia Gailas are also quite pretty much in tune with these recommendations that you included in your final report on the research. I would submit nevertheless that there is need to include more discussion and a clearer recommendation about the question of companies that carry out substantive business operations in European countries. And I would suggest that this category of substantive business operations should be understood or covered by the sufficiently close connection. In the sense that it would suffice that the company, whether it is Asian, Chinese or Indian or Brazilian, carries substantive business operations. You're like selling or buying or having deposits, et cetera, or holding certain investments, not necessarily having subsidiaries here, but just doing business will be considered as a sufficient close connection for this purpose, the purpose of your recommendations. And finally, substantive business operations of presence in the market is a legal category already considered in the US for issues of jurisdiction in the United States and in California in particular. But also in the context of bilateral investment agreements concluded by the European Union, for instance, the EU-Singapore bilateral investment treaty considers investors of each country or grants a category of protection of investors to investors of one of the two countries that carries substantive business operations. In the other country, without being domicile in that country. In relation to operational grievance mechanisms, your recommendations are very pertinent and here quite ambitious, I would say, but nevertheless relevant. You recommend further research on the experience of individuals and communities who have used grievance mechanisms and on the effectiveness of such mechanisms and assess whether they lead to further remediation. That's a very good one very point to the point recommendation. The UN system needs to develop more specific guidance. That's quite ambitious. For the implementation of the UN GP to ensure effective and right space mechanisms and the EU needs to provide clear guidance as well for the EU and the national action plans and companies to provide more information. The area of operational grievance mechanisms is particularly opaque for me and for us in my organization. We have been researching for a while how these mechanisms operate. What we have learned is that there is very little information about that and companies that claim that they are putting in place their grievance mechanisms. In fact, they don't communicate and the communities that are living the surroundings of the company operations themselves know very little about the grievance mechanism, even if the company claims that they have solved hundreds of cases every year. There is a contradiction of claims there. There is little information, even less transparency and reliability and the operation of these grievance mechanisms. There is also a fair degree that some of these mechanisms perhaps inadvertently and voluntarily lead to confrontation inside the communities because some part of the members of the community want to deal with the company and eventually present the claims to the grievance mechanisms and obtain some sort of relief from the company, you know, accepting overall and at the end of the day the presence and the operations of the company in their community. Other parts of the community are opposed wholesale to the presence of the company as such and they don't want to deal and even use any mechanism that the company has put in place. And then the grievance mechanisms have been enabled or the company strategies have been enabled really to deal with this issue of conflict and confrontation inside the community and there are indications that actually those confrontations or conflicts have been encouraged sometimes by company officials. And then finally, as you pointed in your research, this part is in your research, grievance mechanisms are used many times as part of the company legal strategy to shield itself against legal liability by using legal waivers and other mechanisms that finally leave the victim worse than at the beginning. Those are the problems in the operations from the research we have carried out and now the way forward. Let me start first with this issue of grievance mechanisms. At the ICJ in coordination with the different other organizations, hopefully we have been discussing also with the International Bar Association, Human Rights Institute and the Working Group on Business and Human Rights. We will establish a panel of experts towards the end of this year to discuss and research and produce a report and prepare guidance exactly on what you are recommending here. And grievance mechanisms, company-based grievance mechanisms. So that report with additional guidance should be released within one or two years. That includes research and discussions, consultations and side visits, number four side visits to see on the place what's happening with the local communities and the cases that companies claim they have been dealing with in a satisfactory manner. I would say also, apart from that, that the recommendations that you have in your final report will be paid attention, very serious and responsible attention in the global debates in relation to standard setting and ways to increase or improve access to remedies at the United Nations level. We periodically, in Geneva, in the Human Rights Council in the different human rights bodies, we discuss these issues and increasingly the committees, the different committees, the Committee on Economic Social Rights, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations are looking at these issues and the impact of companies, of business corporations and the protection of the human rights. And they are issuing a document, recommendations, comments, et cetera. I think several of these recommendations will find their way into these discussions. So in that sense, I'm very grateful again that you gave me a very good material to work with in my own work. Now, what could possibly happen? What I said is what is going to happen just now, what are we going to do? What could possibly happen in the future? Many of these recommendations are mainly addressed to European organs or European institutions and I think EU institutions will probably take them very seriously and consider them very seriously, especially in view that these recommendations corresponding in most part with others that have been issued by other bodies such as the Council of Europe and others. So they would be really unwise that they were neglected and not considered. I think early this morning we also heard that the European Parliament is also working on our report and a resolution in which many of these issues have been discussed and I bet there will be some reflection of these recommendations into that report in its final shape. There are two ways the European Union can go, I think, in terms of putting into practice some of these recommendations. One is the unilateral avenue and the other one is the collective one. The unilateral action is challenging but it's possible and sometimes it's preferable because if we're going to wait the rest of the world to act and they probably will never act, never take action. I think if EU leads on human rights and leads on business and human rights probably there are very good arguments for European institutions to take the lead on also adopting measures in relation to removing barriers of access to justice. But despite that the European Union is a big player in global affairs and therefore can influence what other regions and countries in the world do, it's not the determinant actor in today's world. And there are other regions and there are other actors that also matter. So collective action is necessary and I think that collective action probably has to go through the UN. In the United Nations we have also two avenues parallel. One is that there is an ongoing process towards a legally binding instrument, a treaty, a convention on business and human rights. And at the end of October there will be the second session for that intergovernmental working group and obviously several of these issues will be also discussed in that context. And that might be the opportunity also for EU and other European actors to advocate for reforms at the global level in a collective way. At the moment the European Union is staying away from that working group. It's just the second year so it's perhaps too early but the point is that they are looking at the process from outside. It might be time maybe soon to stay engaging more actively. The second avenue is what is the follow-up to the implementation of the guiding principles on business and human rights through the working group on business and human rights. The working group on business and human rights is this group of five experts that were appointed to promote the implementation of the guiding principles. They are UN experts and they are the ones who organize the forum on business and human rights that happens every November of the year. And in November I presume these results will also be brought to Geneva and to be presented to the wider world there. But of course presentation and discussion is not enough. The presentation and discussion doesn't apply recommendations, doesn't operationalize recommendations. So we need action by EU or by the working group or by countries in different parts of the world. So that goes and that necessitates some sort of decision policy decision by the Human Rights Council or by the working group or by other actors that have mandate on this issue and other special rapporteurs or UN bodies. So I think we should point towards that. I think the role of global civil society is crucial to achieve those results. I think there is enough material here for many of us to work. I take the point of course that there is a need for further research in certain areas. I think the discussion this morning revealed that the discussion about the applicable law, especially in conflicts of jurisdiction, once you extend the jurisdiction of your courts which law, substantive law will apply and the procedural hurdles that appear in this context are very important, very relevant. So it needs more research probably at a wider level than just the European Union, most probably. But I think what we have now is also enough now to get started. I think so this is also a call for action with which I want to finish my intervention. So I thank you again and congratulate you, Nikola, on the results. So now it's my turn to thank you for inviting me and for guiding us in the panel and for all the interesting results that your research has delivered. So much appreciated. So I'm here from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and I'll explain a little bit what we do. And I'll try to in the process of explaining how we work with business human rights. I'll explain some of the related work we do. And towards the end of the day it's of course interesting to reflect a little bit on what one could say. There would be two avenues. One could say that everything has been said and I had planned already to say it. So I don't have to say it. So that would be one way of escaping or another way would be to say that there have been all the ideas that have been raised is something that I had on my list and I will not deal with it. But there would be a couple of strategies of how to deal with what has been said. The agency of the Fundamental Rights Agency, we often call it FRA. It's based in Vienna, a good hundred staff. We've been there for nine years and we advise the institutions and the member states on things that relates to Fundamental Rights within the European Union. So I'll come back a little bit to this within the European Union because of course some of the issues that we discuss here today are not related to inside of the European Union. So we'll have to be a bit creative in how we work with these issues. We've dealt with a related issue. We issued a report from in August last year dealing with freedom to conduct the business. So one of the articles, one of the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 16, how to remove, if you will, red tape for businesses or at least make sure that there is a good balance between obligations to the society and removing, as I said, obstacles for businesses. We've also dealt with severe forms of labour exploitation and Julia here has been deeply involved in that together with us. And in that context we've of course also touched a little bit on business and human rights related issue. A few weeks ago we issued a handbook on access to justice bringing together Council of Europe law and the European Union law and that's something I must recommend. On the website you can download this or order paper copies and we'll soon have them in all 20, what is it, four EU languages online and in print. And in that handbook we have nothing explicitly on business and human rights but we have on remedies in general that they have to be accessible about providing redress in an efficient way in a coherent way of something that offers a reasonable prospect of success. In the past we've also dealt with access to justice in general in relation to human rights, dealing with discrimination, dealing with data protection, asylum procedures, dealing with issues like length of proceedings, costs, burden of proof, where to turn, etc. And I wanted to exemplify with one project in this area. We also do some of these surveys, large scale surveys, sometimes involving several tens of thousands of interviewees, face to face interviewees or interviews on violence against women, on minorities and immigrants, on Roma, LGBTI persons, etc. And one thing that we see from these surveys or that the surveys confirm is the problem of reported cases or the cases that actually gets to be dealt with. And this attrition triangle if you will, if you imagine all the incidents up here and then the actual solved cases and that, as it's called, attrition process from happening to reported taken seriously, to reported taken seriously, acted on in a sufficient way, very, very few cases are actually dealt with. And this is across the areas and of course relevant for business and human rights as well. If I just take one of these and become a bit more concrete in one of the surveys we did in relation to minorities, more than 70% of the interviews did not report human rights violations. Over a third of all the victims did not report because they didn't know where to turn, so more than a third didn't know where to turn. 80% of all could not think of a single organization where they could turn. And when we gave them in this case the name of equality bodies or national equality bodies in the member states where we interviewed them, 60% had never heard of them. And of course that's an awareness problem that this is again related to business and human rights and many other areas. So those were some of the business human rights related issues that we've dealt with. So free and collective business, severe forms of labor exploitation, access to justice more generally. But we also follow the area of business human rights in some ways. The academic debate, attending a conference here and there, organizing a small event here and there. And we had a nice get together with some hundreds of people in end of June in Vienna called the Fundament Rights Forum where we brought together on various topics ranging from migration to digital age but also businesses where we didn't only discuss business human rights specifically but businesses and human rights was one of the issues. But coming down to what I really wanted to say, so that was the propaganda warm-up, if you will, at the end of June the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions where they called for a number of actions in the European Union and one of them was addressed to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights where they asked us, and I will have to quote, where they asked us to adopt an opinion and I'll come back to what that means in our context, possible avenues to lower barriers for access to remedy at the EU level, taking into account existing EU legal instruments and competences at EU and member states level. So this was done under the Dutch presidency obviously, the good Dutch presidency, not to distinguish it from the surely equally good Slovakian presidency that is ongoing, but this was a request to us and typically we get these requests with some a handful at the most every year from one of the three EU institutions and the Council being one of the more rare requestors. Typically it's the Parliament but on occasion also the Commission. And in the past we've dealt with issues that are typically related to the legislative process or on the European Public Prosecutor's Office or on confiscation of proceeds of crime, on the racism framework decision, on the European investigation order, those kinds of issues where the Parliament or the Commission or the Council has asked us. And here then we have an issue that is not connected which is a bit rarer to a particular legislative process but a broader field if you will where there's less clarity on what the obligations actually are. We have a tradition in these opinions which are advisory in nature to base our findings on what the international law, international human rights law, European human rights law standards are and what should be done. Here it's of course less exact what we can offer. So we are envisaging at least in some weeks time to have something where we will inevitably have to be fairly vague and say what the EU and the Member States could do. It's of course a complex area in terms of legislation, in terms of shared competence, in terms of the mandate of the agency that I alluded to in the beginning. And for these reasons, but that's typically what we always do is to consult well and widely with key stakeholders, civil society governments just to understand the issues to the best of our ability to see what is out there already, of course, learn from what research and other advice has been provided and for that reason I'm very, very grateful and happy to have been here today and also I was in Amsterdam at your previous event, picking up a lot of good ideas. So if I have my way in the end with your opinion there might be things, there will be things that you recognize and maybe that's a, and I'll conclude with that, but it's of course the agency has a particular position. We're an EU agency, an EU body. We can advise the EU institutions again, only advice. There's not binding, but we have to think about what is our added value. So not just restating all the other suggestions that are out there, but we have to do something more specific that the agency, that makes it useful that the agency proposes. And I think you can help me with that and I have some more consultations after this conference is over with some of you. So what could we possibly include? I'm the lead at the agency on drafting the opinion, but I do that together with a number of colleagues and surprisingly, maybe not, we have bosses that also have a say. So what I say here is inevitably my views and they might change, I might change my views or I might be outvoted, but here are some of the ideas that I think could be useful and some of them I already discussed with some of you. And as I said before, you will recognize some ideas here. If I take a handful of examples, maybe on non-judicial mechanisms, I think there's something we could suggest is some kind of a minimum standard, some kind of a checklist or guidance on what would make sense to have for the European Union in order to make access to justice or a remedy genuine and real. Maybe that could be something e-justice related where the European Union has been active in the past. Maybe it could relate to the single digital market or cross-border context of the EU, but maybe we could suggest criteria for independence for anonymity, is that a word? You know what I mean at least. On judicial mechanism, Lisbeth had a nice idea with expanding the mandate from environment and that's of course something we could think about. In terms of incentives, you've dealt with that in your report as well. Towards the end I believe why the European Union should do this and that's something maybe we also can dwell on, role model but maybe also the competitive advantage that these kinds of improvements on remedy would have but also of course for the credibility of the European Union as a whole and maybe for the businesses within the constituency with the citizens or the people of the European Union that we have faith and credibility in the businesses that are based in or operate from the European Union. We could probably say a lot of things about the national action plans and encourage that to be taken further with details and again building in incentives on adopting the national action plans and building in incentives on actually making the action plans actionable, leaving the plan stage. We could probably say something about the clarity of EU law, something that has been raised also here today, encouraging uniformity and ensuring that standards are met looking at or suggesting monitoring but also support and something like the Office of the High Commissioner suggests in their, was it May this year in the report, regular reviews to make sure that the remedies are effective. So not only having a plan but also a practical review of how has it been used, how has it been used, has it had a reasonable chance of success and maybe these kinds of guidance, these kinds of comparative studies that this would entail would also bring a comparative advantage for the European Union in the sense of uniformity that there would be a credible minimum standard for the European Union and maybe coming towards the end here maybe children and discrimination is something we could look at in more detail for obvious reasons maybe but in particular the EU competence would be stronger here and maybe we can argue more forcefully in those areas and if you have a remedy for children I guess others could use it too unless it's very strange. Finally then maybe awareness is of course important and I think there's something we can say a lot about as well that previous speakers have alluded to the last one not the least saying that it has to be known, it has to be accessible and you have to really know that these complaints mechanisms do exist. So I'd like to conclude here by simply saying that I've appreciated listening to the findings from the research and related presentations today and if any of you have particular ideas for us to ponder on and as I said added value for the agency where the agency could suggest something that is not just a suggestion that anyone could make but there's sort of an internal EU suggestion from an independent advisory expert body what we could spend our energy on rather than suggesting everything and any ideas along those lines would be much appreciated. Thank you. Alright, well thank you for holding out so long first of all. My name is Lukas Roerder, I'm from the University of Utrecht also work with the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law and before I start I'll just say two things beforehand first of all those of you who have an older programme of today might notice my name was not on the list before I've been sort of scooped in at a very late moment like I have to cancel personal problems, shit like that happens which means that I haven't had time to completely just my presentation to the other distinguished speakers so if I might be slightly repetitive every now and then I'll try to avoid it as much as possible second thing is that as you notice my speaking pace is pretty fast and I know not all of you native speakers or broke a lot in the English language so if I'm unclear on anything please ask, raise your hand I know there's time for questions afterwards but it would be a bad thing for me to say a lot of words and having you understand just half of them then last thing is that I think the two speakers we just had were pretty optimistic about the possibilities that there are for changing the law relating not just to human rights protection generally but to remedies specifically and my apologies I'm going to be a bit more pessimistic than the past few speakers as you might already infer from Seth Milton over here those of you who don't recognize him watch office space, it's completely unrelated so, extraterritorial remedies I'm going to speak about a couple of things first of all why are we talking about extraterritorial remedies now a couple of previous speakers have already either explicitly or implicitly discussed this so those are very shortly I'll say a couple of things about what the guiding principles and John Ruggers specifically have said about extraterritoriality especially in the third pillar and I'll come to the main point of my presentation that's how states have currently picked up on the extraterritoriality problem mainly in the national action plans I'll say some things about the case law developments but I think those as well have already been pointed to a previous speakers so then I'll end up with so what's ahead where's the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak so why extraterritorial remedies very shortly you've already heard about how the separation of corporate legal personalities means that regulating from a homestay perspective and finding or sorry regulating from a homestay perspective is a bit of a complicated problem and finding remedies at a local level can be equally complicated whether because there is no court available or because there is no legal representation available there's no legal funding there might be very strong evidentiary problems it might be a conflict region specifically any awards that one might receive might not be enforced by local governments there's all kinds of reasons why in specific circumstances finding a remedy as a victim of a business-related human rights violation is hard or actually impossible locally and like I said the separation of corporate legal personality means that this is not just this is not a simple issue there are criminal law possibilities for prosecuting corporations for violations they've committed abroad but whether or not they really provide an opportunity for victims to actually find their own remedies very much depends on the legal system some European legal systems do allow victims to join in a criminal procedure some don't other systems do it to a very limited degree yet other systems make it very easy for victims to file their own criminal complaints a pretty diverse area I'm not really going to discuss that in the rest of the presentation I'm really going to talk about how you can find civil remedies extraterritorially so basically the foreign direct liability cases that Lisbon and I can talk about this morning and this is specifically a problem when we're talking about human rights violations in conflict areas and as the quote over there suggests already early in the drafting process of the guiding principles SRG and Ruggy sort of realized or emphasized this point and as you'll see later on I find it pretty interesting that he's been quite outspoken about the extraterritoriality issue early on in the drafting process specifically to conflict areas as you can see what message should we send good luck but then as we'll see later on not much of that message has gone through in the guiding principles themselves and we were talking about Shell this morning in the separation of corporate legal personalities this is what it actually looks like I know let me just shortly explain each one of these brackets these little boxes is a separate legal person a separate company so we have the parent corporation abroad here there's a holding company another holding company with her specific and now here we come to the service companies and the local subsidiaries that actually commit the operations and so possibly commit the human rights violations this is what the separation looks like and keep in mind that each of these specific companies, each of these boxes is domiciled in another territory they incorporate it somewhere else some for tax reasons some for because it's the local place of operation and a parent company usually in a place where the company started they have most of their roots and I'm just showing you this to sort of give you a very visible example of what extra territoriality looks like I could also take a picture of where I draw these brackets all over the world but you can see how hard it is for a victim to retrace that corporate relationship back all the way back to the parent company and the home state of that parent company so just shortly on the guiding principles and remedies the third pillar as you can see from GP25 providing remedies and ensuring that remedies take place is actually in essence a state obligation yes the guiding principles do talk about non-judicial remedies, yes there's a large discussion of corporate based grievance mechanisms but if you look at GP25 the foundational principle and GP26 the second foundational principle is really a state obligation keep that in mind when we're going to the national action plans it's very much related to the state's obligation to protect against human rights abuses and it's pretty much part and parcel of human rights law for the past two, three decades and the main obligation that states then have is to reduce practical, legal and other relevant barriers that could lead to denial of access to remedy so state obligation to make sure in general that remedies take place the one thing that guiding principles don't say explicitly is whether we're talking about whole state remedies so whether it's only on that obligation is only on the state where the actual violation takes place or whether it also could theoretically incur obligations on the home state the home state of that multinational so again whether a violation happening here would also mean obligations for the state here now extraterritoriality does feature in the comments to the principle so below the principles themselves and very specifically it's one where claimants actually face a denial of justice where in such a barrier GP26 occurs or states should also look at the way that legal responsibility is attributed to members of the corporate group under domestic criminal and civil law and so on and so forth this is basically what we've been discussing today but this is not necessarily amount to an obligation on home states it's a concern that might be generally discussed and at home states might generally have to look at but it doesn't move basically beyond what's already in the text of Gardening Principle 26 and what we then see is basically a jurisdictional debate where we're basically in the space between the point where jurisdiction on the human rights law ends where it ends where the obligation on the home state on states to do something extraterritorial ends and the discussion of how far can a home state go until it reaches its jurisdictional boundaries under public international law begins that sort of jurisdictional no-man's land and the Gardening Principles are pretty silent on that and you would expect states to sort of pick up that you could say assignment that encouragement that you can find in the commentary now part of my research I've been looking at the national action plans and well again as you can see from the most interesting man in the world the Bismol generally remedies only take a small part of the national action plans that have currently been published even before I go there let's be aware that even though we tend to speak of the Gardening Principles as being universally adopted universally supported through UN Human Rights Council only one national action plan has currently been published that's not from a European state only two including that one is the Colombian national action plan are from non EU states so to what extent we're talking about a universal movement and a universal discussion is already I think quite debatable but even in those action plans attention to remedies is pretty limited and where there is talk of remedies it's very much about non-judicial remedies if you look at the Danish national action plan there's a lot of talk about the ombudsman there's a lot of talk about the OECD national action plan if you take the Dutch national action plan even though they do discuss issues under the guise of state based judicial remedies all the action points are on non state based corporate grievance mechanisms all of them same thing goes for the UK national action plans attention for state based remedies is extremely limited where there is concrete attention to state based judicial remedies there's a couple of things to stand out first of all most action plans give some attention to the cost of finding a procedure in that specific state and we've heard about litigation costs again finding legal aid legal representation cost of actually filing the claim cost of paying your lawyer and so on but if you look at the actions proposed almost every national action plan suffices with either just mentioning that it's costly addressing it all the Dutch national action plan even specifically says well we think our legal aid is pretty much sufficient and it's too bad that there's no representative of the legal profession here today because they would probably tell you it is not sufficient otherwise the commitments are very general in reviewing the civil procedure again as heard this morning civil procedure is a pretty complex complicated set of issues as they pertain to business even rights so just a general commitment to review I think is pretty insufficient and as far as extraterritoriality goes we see that some of the national action plan so the Dutch one, the UK and the Danish one do discuss extraterritoriality but the UK national action plan basically leaves it in that jurisdictional no man's land basically saying well we don't think there's an obligation at all to act extraterritorially but states might choose to do so period no position, no commitment, no action the Dutch national action plan goes even further or even further back depending on how you see it saying that well we the Dutch government does not believe that extraterritorial action should be taking place it should not be a general instrument pertaining to extraterritorial action and basically leaves it at that so let me go back to one more point if you look at the Danish national action plan for those of you who are familiar the interesting thing is that it was drafted by the Danish institute of human rights which means and then adopted by the Danish government now I'm not a complete expert on what the specific procedure was but you can basically see that the plan is sort of hinging on two sort of two points sometimes it talks about the recommendations by the Danish institute which do include the recommendation to adopt one unilateral extraterritorial measures and two start negotiations for a multilateral instrument that would include extraterritorial measures but if you see to what extent the government has adopted that recommendation that's completely absent so it's sort of again pretty much in limbo so again I'll do this very shortly because I think we've talked about this pretty extensively already there's an increase in civil cases that sort of try to find their way around that current status quo where states don't really act on the extraterritoriality issues and I'd like to sort of pin point two one you're probably extremely familiar with already especially if you've been to these these sessions before is the Nigerian case in the Netherlands the Aqbal and the Milio Defensive versus Shell case and just to reiterate the jurisdictional foundation of that case was jointly filing the case against the subsidiary so again think about the boxes the one on the bottom and the one at the top arguing that factually they consider concerned the same set of circumstances and then asking the Dutch court to assume jurisdiction over the subsidiary even though it was Dalmasoud in Nigeria because the cases were so closely connected and the interesting thing is that even though the Dutch court did consider and eventually dismissed the case against the parent company because there was no general duty of care for the parent company they could still retain jurisdiction over the subsidiary whether or not this could be possible in other other European states is pretty open but it might be a possibility second case which is interesting for a new one is what I already mentioned the Comiloc case which is an employment case of 20s workers that were dismissed by a mining company 20 years ago in their perspective unfairly where the French court assumed jurisdiction not because as the workers claimed the French holding company was a co-employer but because if the case couldn't go forward in France that would amount to denial of justice and the connection between the Gabonese employee company Gabonese subsidiary and the French holding company was found in just that small share at the time of filing again I think a pretty creative way to go around the issue and as we'll see I think in the future is that in absence of state action litigants will try to find different ways different jurisdictional possibilities of going around the territoriality issue finding in some cases even pretty artificial constructions to get their case to be heard in the European court some of the cases you can find in the Handbook the factual summary is already there there's a Swedish case dumping in Chile there's a German case where actually German court did just assume jurisdiction over a Pakistani factory fire and interestingly enough a new case in the Netherlands filed a figure over the Proboquale disaster and I think if you're interested in the issue of accessoramity if you're interested in extraterritoriality this is basically where I think the main developments are going to come from and what we see in these cases is also that there's an increased involvement of NGOs I was talking about legal funding being a very problematic issue and the lack of state action litpoint NGOs have started to fill that gap even trying to crowd fund as it happens in the Netherlands these kinds of cases in absence of actual legal aid and supporting practically plaintiffs victims local victims that try to bring these cases there's definitely some state action happening in the business human rights area in general we have talked about the French law or Amsterdam but be aware that these do not really directly improve accessoramity the rules that they set and the possibility for finding complaints might help eventually victims to find their own personal remedy but thus far there's no direct increase in these laws let's get the rest of that part the last thing to be honest very disappointed to hear the representative of the EU of the European Parliament talk about how some of the recommendations were killed off in committee because I'll do this from the bottom up the Council of Europe recently adopted a recommendation that basically said verbatim what he was discussing in regard to the European Parliament first of all calls upon all member states of the Council of Europe and be aware every member of the EU is still a member of the Council of Europe not the other way around calls upon the Member States to apply legislative or other measures that might be necessary to ensure human rights abuses by business enterprises to give rise to civil liability and they do specific recommendations as well how they should do that one, form a necessity two, asset based jurisdiction three, rejection of form non-convenience pretty much everything that was also in the European Parliament set of recommendations and I think also pretty much what the report of today is arguing for and another interesting development I think is that the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights has recently engaged with the debate on the NAPs reviewing the United Kingdom's national action plan and basically saying well that's all fine and well but we'd really like to see some action especially regarding the legal liability of corporations domiciled on your territory and they're not as super specific as the Council of Europe is but you can see that from all kinds of international organizations pressure is mounting on the States to actually go ahead with action rather than a national action plan thank you thank you all three speakers for your very insightful contributions and also for sticking to the time because we now have half an hour left for discussion so that's very good but also thank you for showing us how the recommendations coming out of this research project might actually find a way into your work and the many other ongoing developments at the national level at the European level and also at the global level at the United Nations and it's encouraging to hear notwithstanding the very welcome reality check by Lukas about the many avenues that are out there where these recommendations might actually contribute to further action because it's clear that that is what is needed, further action well your contributions have, well I have several questions but I don't want to abuse my position as a moderator so I first would like to give the opportunity to the people in the audience to raise some questions so are there any questions you have for any of the specific panelists or all three of them please could you state your name and your affiliation Hi my name is Sandra Juncoen from the European Coalition for Corporate Justice an argument we've heard from several legislators regarding the removal of access to remedy and justice barriers are that especially related to barriers regarding financial barriers and burden of proof barriers is that they would removing these barriers to European law would come at too great of a cost for the European citizen because then the state would have to either foot some of the costs through like legal aid state sponsored legal aid or state paid inquiries into lifting the corporate veil so they said it would be just too costly for the European Union to have a state as well is this something you've encountered also is there any way around this argument thanks thank you Daniel Augenstein again I have two questions for Jonas that concern more the broader picture the policy vision if you wish I think there are two normative issues that are raised by the type of research we've been doing or maybe that have been driven the first one is something I briefly mentioned this morning short cases that involve human rights violations enjoy somehow particular statutes in the general system of private international law because we think that there's something particularly important about human rights to protect you can also phrase that in doctrinal terms right so the charter is part of your primary law arguably a part of the constitutional essentials of the EU whereas Brussels one is just a regulation so how do these two instruments interact so that would be call it the functional question and then the other one is a territorial question is it the case that the EU should make the same efforts and apply the same standards when protecting human rights internally and externally right so in our cases if an EU company violates human rights should it really matter whether the victim is on the territory of the union or outside because that's the crucial issue for human rights jurisdiction in terms of territory where the victim is now again the EU is required by the treaties to uphold human rights in its external relations and has committed to upholding their universality so the question is it's a normative question again why or to what extent should it matter where the victim is from the perspective of where EU policy is going thank you just an observation the objection is always that we should improve and expand extraterritorial jurisdiction but I think we have also to ask ourselves to what extent a national jurisdiction could be stretched because otherwise the reactions like the ones of the US Supreme Court in Kiebel would be I think highly predictable I think so to what extent the jurisdiction should be or could be stretched and expanded since the jurisdiction remains national so the taxpayers of a certain country pay for judgments and for the service and this is the way the other part of the other side of this problem is by the other side to what extent an innovative let's me stress or perhaps better say an aggressive interpretation of procedural rules took place many times in many countries in my country Italy very aggressive let's say interpretation of law took place in many senses because of corruption I am not going into detail so to what extent it is necessary or it is possible or it is feasible to imagine to give much more larger jurisdiction to the national courts or to what extent I think one should rely also on an extensive and intelligent interpretation by the judges and very last consideration if you take the wording of the judges in Kiebel when they say touch and concern the territory but this is fantastic because what touch and concern once more we need an interpretation how the judge could say that a certain case touch and concerns because of the incredible scandal of public opinion it created I am sorry who would like to react Lukas first let me just take up those two questions at the same time because I think they are very important in point to a certain extent first of all I don't want to come across as a complete naive human rights idealist and go out about talking about how universal civil jurisdiction will save the day that's the first point and if you hear some states talk about the cost barriers and practical problems that we might have if there is an increase in one jurisdiction or an increase in legal aid for these foreign cases sometimes it's a situation that that's what we are all arguing for a complete free-for and I'm not convinced by that attitude first of all because if you look at the aspect of costs and I think you raised it as well as taxpayer costs if you look at the cases that have currently been filed and I think we've seen a pretty great overview of how that happened in most European countries I think we excluded a couple of cases that's one, two maybe maximum 10 cases per country now these cases are big and complicated absolutely but if you compare that to the amount of let's say patent litigation cases if you compare it to the amount of just general corporate liability cases that nothing to do with human rights in general I know merger cases those are all taxpayer funds I think business human rights cases are a small blip on the map and having to increase your legal budget for legal affairs just for those few extra cases that might come in and to be honest I don't see a wave of cases coming to be very honest I don't think that's the major problem and I also don't think it's a genuine concern by most states I think they're more concerned with protecting their own multinationals rather than their own national budget related to that what can you stretch up extraterritorial jurisdiction now the reason I ended with these cases that are currently going on is that I think they also serve as a warning to states because victims NGOs, creative lawyers will find a try and find ways to use existing procedural mechanisms to file these cases and you were talking about the alien tort statute I mean the alien tort statute was never written or meant to be a human rights statute let alone a business human rights vehicle it was never meant to be that way it was rediscovered and re-employed now we don't know what the next ATS is going to be maybe nothing maybe nothing nothing ever comparable but there might be some statute or some rule that will be stretched up abuse turned around in the future by civil litigants and maybe by courted or receptive to those complaints and I actually think that being clear as a state on how far you will go jurisdiction to let these cases come in and also to take your responsibility for hosting these parent corporations that's really what you're doing might even curtail the amount of cases where as an external observer you could say well this might not actually touch and concern to use that language this specific form now I personally have a major problem with such a concern test and the Keelbaugh case but I won't go into that but let me end on this point all these major multinationals and I'll just restrict myself to the ones that are genuinely connected to the territory of the home state where they're incorporated Shell for instance they pay a lot of taxes they bring in a lot of revenue they bring in a lot of opportunities for the home state and my question is at what cost and I think as a home state we absolutely have a responsibility to bear at least some of the costs that are now externalized and put in different states that we aren't currently paying but we are reaping the profits Thank you very much for intriguing questions Sandra right so if I could speak to that first I don't think I can add much but of course as Lukas is saying it's not necessarily full costs it's not necessarily a flood of cases but and you could also see it as you could address strategic cases and strategic litigation if you were concerned doesn't have to be that they're full support or a strong financial cost for every case every conceivable case you could also think about financial costs not being the only costs if you think about the non-financial costs you have another calculation a slightly naive idea but of course very relevant if you take human suffering or environmental cost into the picture and you could also see it as addressing a systemic issue so it's not necessarily that funding that case addresses that single one-off situation with a bit of luck a systemic issue is being addressed with that case and you can see it as investing in a shift that affects a set of legislation or a set of policies or a particular company or a way companies act what have you and maybe I also like the idea of crowd funding for litigation and of course that's not for the state typically to contribute to but that's of course a nice modern way of getting support on Daniel's questions there I guess they were somewhat leading questions because I think you answered them for me and there would of course be arguments to say why human rights or fundamental rights shouldn't be exclusive there are other important values environmental being one of them but at the same time as you say there are there is the charter of constitutional status there are the values of the European Union that relate to the rule of law to democracy to human rights to minority rights in article in article two and of course that gives human rights a special status in criminal justice in the area of criminal justice there are typically fundamental rights clauses in the EU instruments but there are no other exclusionary clauses like that so you could argue also there that there is some special status for human rights fundamental rights on environmental issues we heard earlier today about the specific specific regime for that and that of course relates to the Orhus or Arhus convention and the role of the European Union or the engagement of the European Union there so that explains maybe historically why that has been dealt with in a separate way but maybe human rights should have been dealt with very similarly from very early on second question from Daniel there on the territorial aspects so I would think for credibility reasons and for practical reasons there shouldn't be a difference of course you might have much more significant human rights violations externally but as a principle there shouldn't be too much of a difference of course there are all kinds of practical things so I would argue that and also in the context of the opinion that we will have to adopt with our mandate being exclusively within the union that's also an argument for at least in our thinking and in our suggestion we say that they are the same and then I come back to what I said before in my intervention and earlier on the importance of a credible system that is something that the constituency that the people of the European Union that they can believe in the businesses that they can believe in the European Union that they are doing their utmost to make the European Union a credible and sort of a good place to be and something to be proud of so maybe that's a final argument again on the wishy-washy soft side but maybe still worthwhile mentioning I think one is enough I want to address the question my gentlemen here in the first rule I think that's a very good question and also in relation to what Lucas reminded us in his intervention I think there are many difficulties of course in all this debate and on any advocacy objective of expanding jurisdiction of courts of any country jurisdiction has traditionally been based on territory and then territory is by default jurisdiction and the other grounds of jurisdiction are always what we call extraordinary but this is what has historically been the rule and I think the whole 20th century and now the 21st of increased globalization which we basically all the economic actors especially economic actors but also civil society increasingly and more easily operating across the globe with our respect basically by frontiers and technology making its part as well in facilitating all this cross frontier cross border operations has made it unworkable that the rule and I think we need to be creative to respond to the challenges of today we need to be creative and also be ambitious and take the risk if we're going to wait until everything becomes clear and we have a perfect model of world order and legal order and then we take action making you know changes here and there and there probably that would be too late and the planet will no longer exist and we will go with it but sorry just let me finish the expansion of jurisdiction I mean it's just one part of the whole puzzle and I think the jurisdiction, the judiciary of developing countries or the countries where the abuses occur had to play a role as well they had to be efficient they had to deal with the subsidiaries and it is possible that a coordinated set of changes will finally achieve the final objective the EU in terms of jurisdiction no where close to the US that is true extraterritorial jurisdiction and then they complain because the European Union imposes a fine on Apple but they do that all the time all the banks from Barclays to HSB and Paribas they said having fined by US authorities all those recent years without any hindrance and that's extraterritorial jurisdiction for true but the EU is no where close to that so don't worry too much in expanding a little bit just to get a little bit close to that we will never be risking too much thank you I know there are more questions in the audience so I would like to ask you to be as brief as possible and in both answers and questions so we have enough time we'll first you and then Lisbeth hello I'm Sheikha Setia from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and my question was to all of you actually I mean we're developing these tools and talking about the modalities of these tools but what are the strategies for actually bringing I mean giving these tools in the hands of the communities that we're talking about as rights holders how do you take it from this sort of discussion at the government level at the policy level at the academic level to the communities that we're talking about Lisbeth and are there any are more questions anyone else that would like to address the panel no okay then Lisbeth thank you yeah I just would like to address and hear the opinions of the people on the panel on two ways forward that we didn't really discuss today these are not the ways forward but I do think they are this is about two potential minimum thresholds as you could call them first is the right to a fair trial as incorporated in article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and now the European Convention on Human Rights the material provisions in the convention do not apply extraterritorial extraterritorially but article 6 is a procedural provision and would probably apply so this is the right to fair trial which also encompasses the right to access to court and that would probably also be a right that plays a role in foreign drug liability cases even if they pertain to victims from outside the ECHR member states or if they apply to cases pertaining to wrongs committed outside the ECHR member states and the ECHR jurisprudence shows that there are certain minimum thresholds when it comes to costs and also when it comes to access to evidence and interestingly this has been raised in the Shell Nigeria case it hasn't been taken very far in this case Heather the plaintiff basically said the fact that we have such difficulties in getting access to evidence on the basis of Dutch procedural rules is actually a violation of article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights I think this is interesting especially in those cases where you really find that victims find themselves in a catch 22 situation of really not being able to get effective access to a court in the EU member states and I would be interested to hear your opinions on that another way or another way forward or minimum threshold I think and is also something we haven't discussed today is in the field of criminal law as we found in our report for the Dutch government actually Dutch law we looked at material rules of Dutch criminal law has a lot of possibilities for holding corporations criminally liable there's already a lot of in the law that is in the books that we can use to at least hold liable those companies that are involved in the most serious violations of most serious human rights abuses and my question would be I have no idea about how this works in other countries but I do suspect there's more there's similar possibilities there what we find in the Netherlands is that there is a problem when it comes to enforcement because again that is costly so there are possibilities with public prosecutors will not take up these cases because they simply do not have the funds or the capacity to do so with their whole with their huge workload so I would be interested to hear how this is if you have any opinions on this or on the feasibility of this avenue and maybe also from Nikola I know this also has to do with I think developments at the international criminal court so in the Netherlands for instance we have a task force that deals with serious international crimes because we have to have this task force because of the statute of the international criminal court this statute does not contain the obligation to criminalize also corporate corporations and I was wondering if you know about any developments in that area that was not enough, okay thank you let's first give the panelists the opportunity to react to both questions and I will also take the opportunity, thank you shall I go first, oh no well no I don't actually think I should do that as a moderator but okay thank you I will I have several questions I'd like to ask for panel but I'm going to react to Lisbeth concerning the issue of criminal law because indeed I've read a very interesting research done by Lisbeth coordinated by Lisbeth and it's really worth reading it because it shows what's going on there's so much actually going on and it does show that there are opportunities in criminal law I don't think there is any serious debate at the moment about extending the jurisdiction of the ICC beyond the possibility of holding individuals accountable for international crimes of course it has been proposed in the past when there were negotiations on the ICC there was a serious proposal on the table to extend the mandates or the ICC to include legal persons and it wasn't adopted I think for many political reasons but also one of the reasons brought forward was also the fact that it's not possible within every national jurisdiction to hold legal entities to account so it's still a very diverse scattered landscape so I don't think any time soon that's going to happen I'm sure it's going to pop up in the negotiations deliberations on towards an international treaty but I think we all know that at least the very least from a political perspective we're very far removed from anything like that coming into being any time soon I'm going to give you the opportunity to react also to what was said would someone like to react to the questions concerning how we actually going to bring all of this down back to the people on the ground to the rights holders all the issues mentioned also the respect concerning these minimum thresholds also the applicability of Article 6 of the European Convention once these cases actually take place within the European legal space I think I'm particularly interested on your question on criminal law the possibilities, the potential of criminal law I think there are interesting developments there everybody knows that there are amendments to the African Court of Human Rights granting the African Court criminal jurisdiction on corporate crimes a series of corporate crimes I don't think that status is enforced yet probably will never be and even if it's enforced the level of implementation in the African continent is quite limited but there still is some interesting development that shows there is some interest and willingness there there are debates also and in that regard there is a growing expansion of criminal or the acceptance of corporate criminal liability and many jurisdictions in the south that wasn't the case and that's especially thanks to the push from the OECD and the anti-private convention machinery they're putting pressure to implement those changes and I think that shows more or less the leader where to go which way to go, these changes are possible and why changes shouldn't be possible in this order I think it is quite feasible and finally the last thing is that I probably made a mistake of overemphasizing the issue of jurisdiction I just wanted to in my presentation highlight that issue which is particularly relevant but it's not the only issue and of course the expansion of jurisdiction is not everything it's just one element but in relation to criminal investigations, prosecution and including implementation, recognition, execution of sentences and civil and commercial matters cooperation, mutual legal assistance is crucial and that's also been part of the recommendations which are report and violence and it's also in the Council of Europe report and many other things mutual legal assistance, cooperation between the judicial, the police and the other authorities is crucial in all this so I think any legal framework we may create in the future has to have a crucial a very important chunk on cooperation across jurisdiction thanks you have your own I think so maybe I could try to say something it would be very simple to so I think there could of course be a number of things one could do but I referred to earlier to the problem of awareness and that you have to know where to turn basically and of course coming back to what I also alluded to about comparative advantage for the European Union of more uniformity of having one system or one minimum standard or a clarity on what the responsibility is that brings awareness at the level that is not achieved by having 28 systems or more so of course that's something that is related to spreading the tools as you phrased it let me first start there as well, I find it actually harder question to answer than I thought it would be because that might have to do with the fact that I'm just a tower academic working for my desk that might be part of it but the problem is I think that on the one hand I'm not so sure whether let's say handing out leaflets and say you can have your case in the Netherlands will really be very beneficial on the other hand it would be very easy to say well just let the NGOs handle it and tell them where to go the answer is to be very cowardly somewhere in the middle but think of including the possibility of national procedures in the consultations with the OECD contact points you could think of talking about including this when you're setting standards for non-judicial grievance mechanisms just to sort of have this extra line in there saying hey but if you're not satisfied with this these are your judicial possibilities local first but it might be hypothetically possible to go there and there and I think like a handbook like this is a small step towards that and whether or not just really sort of advertise that I don't know I mean one of the problems which we generally don't tend to discuss here is the question of how these cases actually get to the forum where they're at and usually there's either an NGO involved or very specifically a lawyer's office that sees an economic opportunity in pursuing these cases and that might be just as well out of let's say political motivation or a general belief in human rights I mean I don't doubt that but if you see which lawyers have filed these cases it's not the general civil law population a very specialized office that files such cases and it will go actively looking for them and contacting NGOs and basically building a business practice on this now whether or not it's a good thing I'll leave it completely open but it is the way in which it currently is happening it might be the way in which it is increasing and at that point thank you very much I don't know much about criminal law generally the only thing I want to say about that is it might also help if prosecutors again will also have the courage to look extra territorially and see what the possibilities are those cases will be very hard for evidential reasons limitation of enforcement jurisdiction and so on is a major huge amount of barriers but let's think about traffic you included it in your presentation as a business human rights extraterritorial case I actually disagree I don't think it's an extraterritorial case in this case does prosecutor only prosecuted the export of the dangerous substances from the Amsterdam port without a license for that specific stuff that's the only thing that was that this case was about and of course in the background there are all these thousands of victims in the Ivory Coast but they could not join the procedure because it wasn't about their specific harm they didn't join the procedure there was little no communication only afterwards that the British civil case contacted the Dutch prosecutor to say hey that evidence you feel it can we use it and it was mainly not just against our figure but also against the Amsterdam port authority and the municipality of Amsterdam just about could we leave this let this stuff leave the harbor but that is necessarily the violation that's at the root of it and even though they were convictions and we have already heard they were sort of alleviated a bit I don't think that would be remotely satisfying for victims so they have to address these cases these cases would have to address the actual on the ground violation that specifically harmed the victims get your hands on last point on the European court on one hand I don't think the court will ever go as far as saying that Article 6 requires states to extend the jurisdiction laws I don't think so both for I think very good legal reasons I don't think Article 6 even as procedure right goes that far but also that would be political suicide basically they won't do that they would never do that but at the point of equality of arms evidentiary issues I think that's where a major battle still has to be fought I don't think local courts will do that but if that ever comes out through the European Court of Human Rights I think we're going to see a very interesting case just one very final thought because we've run out of time I'm very much aware thank you for raising the issue how are we going to bring all this down to back to the rights holders because I think it's crucial and I would just like to point out lack of information of where to go where to turn but also lack of information on corporate structures it's actually absolutely vital it played an enormous size of role in the ongoing shell litigation in the Netherlands this lack of information which leads to inequality of arms so in the field of the environment you pointed out we have the Arhus Convention which is all about participation and providing information an area that needs a lot of attention when we move forward on these issues ok that being said I would like to invite you to thank our panelists for their most insightful presentations so we've reached our final segment of the final conference my thanks to all watching us live via streaming all of you here for your patients your questions, your interest to end our day today we have a special guest with us who will share her closing concluding remarks to send us off and hopefully with a lot of thought and reflection moving forward so I would just briefly like to introduce Heidi Autala previously the Minister for International Development and State Ownership Steering in Finland from 2011 to 2013 she is currently working her third legislature as a member in the European Parliament in the Greens EFA Group she has complemented her extensive political career at the national and the European level with other professional activities and various voluntary work commitments related mostly to human rights. Heidi now Vice President of the Greens EFA Group previously chaired the subcommittee on human rights. In addition she is the co-chair of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly and the European Parliament Working Group on Reproductive Health, HIV AIDS and Development. So thank you and thank you all. Good afternoon it's really a pleasure for me to understand that there is such a group of distinguished lawyers and other experts dealing particularly with the issue of access to remedy in business and human rights area and as a policy maker I would like to perhaps give you a picture as I describe it at the moment where are our chances to promote responsible business conduct and I think we can do a lot. I heard from my legal advisor Heike who is sitting here in the back of the room who has been following your discussions that Mrs Jannebas has described that working with business and human rights is like watching the grass grow you just need to sow the seeds and watch it sometimes what happens. I'm an agronomist by training so I like this very much but I think at the moment we can do very much we really can fertilize these seeds that we have so because in this globalized world indeed I think there's one particular let's say backlash that has faced let's say those who want to promote free trade that people are simply not anymore buying that I would say there's two elements which are sometimes quite different from each other there is this kind of real protectionist nationalist element that no enough is enough but then there is this I would say perhaps more informed element in the criticism which is that we see that companies and their business operations supply chains as they are so international today that they are not responsible and that they are creating problems they may be adding to GDPs they may be helping developing countries to expand their export sectors but that we see a lot of I would say very unpleasant side effects and that's why the whole discussion of responsible business conduct is so important also and I believe that we have many concrete issues that can be conducive to the ideas that you have been developing in this project and I would not only speak about the access to remedy issue which is important it is the let's say the missing third pillar of the RAGI framework but also a little bit about the sort of beginning of the chain where problems are created and how we can prevent them indeed if we look at the implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights we can see that they are a very effective efficient instrument we'd like to see more and more of national action plans now I understand that by far most of the EU member states either an accepted one or one in the making and this has to be ensured that it will be carried out I belong to those who are slightly skeptical of this idea of having one binding instrument at global level on business and human rights which is the so-called Ecuador initiative because I see the risk that it will maybe also damage the implementation of the RAGI principle so I'd rather see that this process is going on and if the Ecuador initiative if it doesn't damage this implementation but rather compliments it and brings it to further then why not in the European Parliament's legal affairs committee I took the initiative to start to deal with the issue of access to remedy we had a hearing where we invited the persons from the High Commissioner's office from Geneva to explain to us what was going on in this project just before the Human Rights Council adopted the report this summer and I'm convinced that we will continue to work on that together with other relevant parliamentary committees and where I see the greatest opportunity now is the forthcoming action plan on responsible business conduct that we are all eagerly waiting from the European Commission it's a pity that it didn't come during the Dutch presidency because the Dutch presidency would have been the absolutely ideal one to take it on it maybe deserves to be mentioned that when the Dutch presidency opened their term even just before January they organized an international conference on this topic in Amsterdam which created a lot of good ideas and strengthened networks across all stakeholders but I've been told before the summary says that we can expect this communication to come from the Commission towards the end of the year and I am one of those MEPs who would like to see that it gets a very thorough treatment because it touches so many aspects and it also in our parliamentary world it has touched so many different parliamentary committees from employment to environment to human rights, foreign affairs international trade legal affairs and so on and that could be a great opportunity also to interact with the lawyers researchers with other stakeholders and civil society to see how we can best boost the whole whole framework on business and human rights and very importantly the access to remedy issue but indeed I wanted to touch a little bit the beginning of this long chain that sometimes lead into violations of human rights and the need on access to remedy which you have so successfully discussed in your project and today I believe that there must indeed be a remedy in place when one is needed but we should also treat and prevent the cause of such a need of remedy and that's why we need corporate accountability and other responsibility legislation and policies that prevent human rights violations from happening in the first place and I've been told that many of the distinguished speakers today have also discussed measures that not only would help the access to justice but could also prevent violations so the whole chain has been in your discussion and what could be done let me mention that the notion of policy coherence for development has gained a lot of support and has become at least in a level of words and ideas a very important tool now we may rather talk about policy coherence for sustainable development after we have the so called UN Agenda 2030 which is the implementation of the 17 sustainable development goals with so many sub targets and which is a very comprehensive global programme so I think what has to permeate all actions is this understanding that we have to integrate that we have to see at the same time how we can solve and address different problems from human rights to environmental degradation to poverty eradication which still has to be the basis for development cooperation and the EU itself could establish a better disclosure obligations some have already been put in place but those are evidently important in gathering evidence and information about alleged violations and just the existing of this kind of legal tool talking about disclosure obligations would make the companies to take their accountability obligations much more seriously so I'm not a lawyer but I also know that in many cases it is very difficult to establish the link between the foreign subsidiary and the parent company so the idea to legally presume that the parent company controls its subsidiary is worth considering because in practice that is often the case but the idea that I like most is the statutory duty to conduct human rights due diligence and here I think a very encouraging sign is that eight EU member states are supporting the or maybe together with France are supporting the initiative of France to introduce mandatory human rights due diligence obligations many of you may have followed the initiative and it hasn't been very smooth because there have been many questions about what sanctions civil law or criminal law and if I understand the present state the idea of having criminal sanctions has been a bit too radical at this time but I listened with big ears your recent discussion on this sort of where would be the right forum and should it be criminal sanctions or what now let's see that maybe the French initiative could actually be projected to the European level I think it's a realistic idea that there could be an EU based legal instrument which would oblige enterprises whether parent or subsidiary to perform their human rights due diligence process properly and then of course the discussion would arise that if there would be a European Union instrument so where would be which forum for access to remedy would be a part of that initiative which is not at the moment to my knowledge the case but we could somehow refine and expand and develop further the French initiative and see what new ideas it would bring to our EU level discussions but I don't think we only need mandatory legislation I also have seen many times that soft law instruments and voluntary initiatives actually are a good start for something that sometimes later becomes mandatory so in the European Parliament we maybe have a little bit too much this kind of ideological type of discussion on whether corporate social responsibility has to be voluntary or mandatory I think it can be both and sometimes indeed there is a sort of chain of events that a good voluntary event measure becomes mandatory especially because then companies start to realize that actually it's not good for the exemplary and forerunner companies to suffer from those who are the writers so I think we can have a very dynamic approach to the instruments then should we perhaps look at the model of the safeguards of another policy frameworks of international financing institutions such as the World Bank and European Investment Bank maybe that could help in guiding the companies at the sort of policy level with the policy level measure to see what kind of elements there should be in the proper due diligence analysis and thus we would help the companies to understand what has to be done in order to prevent further violations and failures I have been following closely some specific cases where even with the best intentions companies or in this case development financing institutions fail to do their due diligence studies I may mention a case where the Dutch and the Finnish development financing institutions got into quite a big trouble in Honduras because there was a hydropower project called Agvat Sarka which also was going to be built on a land of indigenous people and not everyone at the local level agreed that this project should take place it's not the mega project but nevertheless the contradictions at local level were so hard and there's a very well-known case of Bertakaseres who was one of the the main victim of this case so how can it happen that even companies or financing institutions who have the best intentions in the world to do something good to make our planet a better place can fail so I think there is really a case to see how such organizations and companies of course could be guided to make sure that they don't fail in their due diligence finally a word about openness and transparency in this discussion on voluntary measures versus mandatory binding measures I think a kind of a middle way is through openness and transparency many times we have seen that the fact that companies have started to look and disclose their practices to the public, to the governments to their investors in a proper way has also helped to improve their practices so that's why I would very much like to see that transparency goes along with all the measures that will be put in place so we're dealing with such a truly global and broad phenomenon and the responsible business conduct is so important for meeting the global challenges that we really have to work together very hard and there are several of us in the European Parliament who would be very happy to continue to interact with yourselves when the moment comes so thank you very much thank you for those thoughts it leaves us I think with a bit of optimism moving forward with the policy makers who have these issues at heart and are looking to push these issues forward it's been a real pleasure it's been as we've mentioned years of hard work to get to this point all those who have registered online and those of you here you'll be receiving a sort of a notification we have the videos and podcasts up of today's events and then later on when the e-book is available online as well for your download thank you so much all the best and we invite you to continue working and I have to make some change thank you all