The European Parliament adopted a resolution tabled by the Committee on Development on the EU’s input to a UN Binding Instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with transnational characteristics with respect to human rights.
Members recalled that a system of corporate liability for human rights abuses is currently being negotiated in the UN, within the UNHRC’s open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights (OEIGWG), established by the UN General Assembly in 2014. The mandate of the working group is to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises. Whilst the EU and its Member States play a role at the OEIGWG, the Commission has no mandate from the Council to conduct negotiations on behalf of the EU concerning its participation in the OEIGWG.
Parliament reaffirmed the urgent need to act in an effective and coherent manner at all levels in order to effectively address human rights abuses by transnational corporations, to provide for access to remedies, and address legal problems resulting from the transnational character of the activities of business enterprises and TNCs and the growing complexity of global value chains and the extraterritorial dimension of transnational companies.
In this connection, Parliament noted that many obstacles persist regarding access to judicial remedy, particularly in case of transnational corporations, due to, for example, difficulties encountered by victims in identifying the competent court, lack of codification of certain human rights abuses in penal codes, or corruption. It considered it regrettable that a global approach is still lacking to the way in which transnational corporations abide by human rights law and ensure other remedy mechanisms, which may contribute to TNCs’ impunity for cases of human rights abuses.
Members warmly welcomed the work initiated in the United Nations through the OEIGWG to create a binding UN instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, stressing that corporate social responsibility on a voluntary basis risks is not sufficient for ensuring full conformity with international standards and obligations, and moreover, creates unfair competition for those who choose to comply with international standards.
They reiterated their call for the EU and its Member States to engage genuinely and constructively in these negotiations and in the intergovernmental process aimed at the completion of the OEIGWG’s mandate.
The binding treaty should build on the UNGP’s framework and encompass:
Parliament urged the EU and its Member States to be actively involved in this intergovernmental process through the creation of a working group through the Commission, the EEAS, the Council Working Group on Human Rights (COHOM) and the relevant committees of Parliament, on the basis of the principle of Policy Coherence for Development.