• Multilateral regulation

Multilateral regulation

This paper addresses options that the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) intends to explore, both at the international level and at European Union level,  which would improve the legal accountability of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) for human rights and environmental rights abuses. It is intended as an invitation to debate on the steps that could be taken to ensure that transnational corporations are held to account for violations of human and environmental rights that they commit, or in which they are complicit wherever they operate.

The authors discuss the following options for progressing under international law:

• clarifying the existing obligation to protect human rights already imposed on the State on whose territory transnational corporations operate
• set up a mechanism imposing on corporations direct obligations under international law
• establish an obligation on states to control transnational corporations, beyond the current interpretation given to the scope of this obligation.

The European Union may also contribute to improving the accountability of transnational corporations domiciled in the EU Member States in the following ways:

• the national courts of the EU Member States must accept jurisdiction over civil liability claims filed against any defendant, including corporations, domiciled on their territory, wherever the damage took place and whatever the nationality of the claimants
• as a longer term option, it may be argued that the European Union has the competence to approximate the national legislations of the EU Member States as regards the imposition of a criminal liability on transnational corporations for human rights abuses.
  

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