par Briere, Chloe 
Référence The European Union and international fora: Does the European Union serve multilateralism? (3 & 4 October 2024: Université de Rennes)
Publication Non publié, 2024-10-04
Référence The European Union and international fora: Does the European Union serve multilateralism? (3 & 4 October 2024: Université de Rennes)
Publication Non publié, 2024-10-04
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | The accountability of businesses for the human rights violations committed abroad during their activities is a long-standing issue. Numerous initiatives have been undertaken to address this question, notably to ensure access to justice for the victims of such abuses. At the global level, the main form of action had traditionally been the adoption of soft-law standards, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. However, the adoption of legally binding standards has been progressing. Internally, the European Union has negotiated two key instruments: a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence and a Regulation on prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market. Their negotiations concluded in Spring 2024 before the European elections, and their formal adoption is now pending. These instruments will change the obligations binding on the EU Member States, especially those - such as France or Germany - which adopted national legislation on the matter. In parallel, an open intergovernmental working group within the UN Human Rights Council has been engaging since 2014 in the negotiation of a new international legally binding treaty to “regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”. Such a decision possesses a particular background as it results from a strong mobilization of civil society actors, that remain closely associated with the process, thus reflecting the ambition of a more inclusive form of global governance. These processes at national, European and international levels are partially intertwined. The European Union and (some of) its Member States have been participating in and regularly contributed to in the different sessions of the open intergovernmental working group. On the other hand, UN bodies have closely followed the negotiations of the EU instruments and taken a position to support them. The proposed contribution builds on a previous study retracing the ambiguous position of the EU regarding the negotiations of a UN Business and Human Rights Treaty. The text would go beyond a mere update of the state of these negotiations, and the possible evolution of the positions taken by the EU. The proposed contribution would pursue two ambitions. It would first intend to dissect the determinants that may explain the ambiguous position of the EU towards these international negotiations, related but not limited to its own status within the UN Human Rights Council, and the difficult coordination with the Member States in the absence of a consensus on the added value of such initiative. It would also ascertain to what extent the EU truly promotes a “multilateral solution to a common problem”, in line with Article 21 TEU. One can indeed question whether the recent adoption of EU instruments does not represent an acknowledgement of the limits of a multilateral process of norm production, that fails to include major international partners, and an attempt of the EU to identify more efficient strategies to promote the implementation of relevant international standards. |
