TotalEnergies summoned to force it to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the objective of the Paris agreement to contain global warming below 1.5°C. Suez sued for repeated failures at one of its factories in Chile, implicated in the contamination of the drinking water network by hydrocarbons in July 2019, depriving 140,000 residents of the municipality of Osorno of water for more than ten days. EDF accused of not having consulted the indigenous populations of the community of Union Hidalgo, in Mexico, where the energy company planned to install a giant wind farm made up of around a hundred turbines before abandoning the project.
These three cases have three things in common. They blend on the law on the duty of vigilance of large companies with regard to the human and environmental risks linked to their activities. Actions, brought by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), were declared inadmissible at first instance. The three cases are judged on Tuesday March 5 before the Paris Court of Appeal. The first three hearings of the brand new chamber 5-12 will focus on their admissibility, a step prior to an examination on the merits.
Faced with the rise in disputes concerning environmental issues, the Paris Court of Appeal decided to create, within its economic division, a chamber dedicated to “emerging disputes”responsible for disputes on the duty of vigilance and ecological responsibility. “The Paris Court of Appeal must rise to the new challenges of preventing serious attacks on human rights and fundamental freedoms, the health and safety of individuals as well as against the environment “explained the first president of the Paris Court of Appeal, Jacques Boulard, during the formal back-to-school hearing on January 15.
On this occasion, he specified the reasons which motivated the establishment of this new chamber: “These are emerging disputes whose systemic dimension requires, for magistrates, that they have transversal jurisdictional skills, borrowing from various branches of law, and for the parties to the trial, that they benefit from the guarantee of greater predictability of case law. »
Limited results
The Paris Court of Appeal has national jurisdiction in matters of duty of vigilance. It is therefore required to handle all cases, even if the headquarters of the groups concerned is not in the Paris region.
You have 63.43% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.