"Do No Harm: The Case for an EU Law to Hold Business Liable for Human Rights Violations and Environmental Harm", October 2020

This report tells five stories of how companies based in the EU are implicated in human rights violations and environmental destruction across the world, from South America to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia...

In 2018, the German private airport operator Fraport Brasil – Porto Alegre, a full subsidiary of Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide, became the operator of the airport... They announced that they would extend the runway..., using the exact plot of land where Vila Nazaré is located...

“We at Fraport have nothing to do with the decision. Relocating people was one of the preconditions for signing the contract between the authorities and the company,” said CEO of Fraport Stefan Schulte, at its shareholders meeting in May 2019...

Before starting the project, Fraport should have been required to conduct due diligence, where it would have identified the human rights issues involved in building the airport, including the issues of land ownership, forced eviction and compensation of the inhabitants. A mHREDD law with strong enforcement could have forced the company to address these issues...

The Ejama-Ebubu community, that have suffered from oil pollution caused by Shell since 1970, won a court case against the company in 2010...

When the company refused to abide by the court’s decision, the community turned to the UK courts in the home country of the parent company to try to enforce the payment. But without success. In 2019, the judge decided in favour of the oil transnational...

An EU mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation should impose an obligation on EU companies to conduct due diligence for the activities of their subsidiaries...

In 2010, ... [a] huge gas field was discovered in the Cabo Delgado region off the coast of northern Mozambique... Transnational companies started arriving to develop onshore infrastructure and an industrial complex, taking the lands and fishing grounds, and leaving the locals with no way to sustain themselves and their families...

[I]n 2011 [SOCFIN] ... sign[ed] a lease agreement with the Sierra Leone government to use the land for palm oil plantations...

A mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation with strong enforcement mechanisms could have required SOCFIN to consider whether adequate consultations took place...

[F]ishermen in Makassar are protesting the mining of sand by Dutch dredger Boskalis for the extension of the harbour...

In response to criticism on the impact of the project on fisheries in Jakarta Bay, Boskalis and Van Oord said that they had agreed that the responsibility lies with the Indonesian property developer and that they should therefore be the first point of contact for the fishing communities. Jan de Nul Group did not reply at all to information requests by journalists and NGOs...

The EU dredging companies should have been required to conduct mHREDD before starting operations. A mandatory law with robust enforcement and penalties for non-compliance would have obliged the companies to assess whether the local company they contracted with was adequately consulting with the affected community...

The cases in this report show why we urgently need mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (mHREDD) in the EU...

At the same time, ... [a]n EU law must be accompanied by provisions that strengthen liability against European companies for the harm they caused, even when they have conducted due diligence...