BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

It is true that the two approaches to business-related human rights abuses, i.e. the UN Guiding Principles as a soft law document, on one hand, and the project of a legally binding treaty on the other, do not necessarily contradict each other. There is no inherent competition between the UN Guiding Principles and an international legal instrument. John Ruggie, the author of the UNGuiding Principles, has suggested that international legal instruments might serve as precision tools with regard to the “Principles”. However, Ruggie has clearly opposed the idea of a comprehensive treaty on business and human rights. He found that from the victims’ perspective, negotiations on a comprehensive treaty are not only a bad idea, but even a profound deception. 27 John Ruggie, in his recommendations on the follow-up to his mandate, has further noted that national jurisdictions have divergent interpretations of the applicability to business enterprises of international standards prohibiting such gross human rights abuses that might potentially amount to the level of international crimes, especially in situations of armed conflict or other forms of heightened risk. Ruggie suggested that an intergovernmental process of drafting a new international legal instrument might address the specific challenges posed by this protection gap. 28 3. The UN Guiding Principles and their implementation in the European Union It has been shown that the EU has played an active role with regard to the preparation and adoption of the UN Guiding Principles and has also formulated a very clear position in the negotiations about a legally binding instrument. In this part of the study we will highlight some issues related to the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles by the EU and its Member States. 3.1 National Action Plans and Legislative Measures of individual Member States The UN Guiding Principles shall be integrated into governments’ national action plans and policies. So far, 19 national action plans have been adopted, 14 of them by EU Member States: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Sweden, Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, and the Czech Republic. As for the regional group of Latin American and Caribbean states (the so-called GRULAC), only Colombia and Chile have adopted their national action plans. 29 It is worth noting that the European Commission, in its Communication of 2011 entitled “A renewed EU strategy 2011–2014 for Corporate Social Responsibility”, called on all EU Member States to develop their own national action plans for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles. It is understood that national action plans can contribute to 27 RUGGIE, John Gerard: A Business and Human Rights Treaty? International legalisation as precision tools, June 2014, (available at www.ihrb.org/library/publications/treaty-on-business-human-rights). 28 RUGGIE, John Gerard: Mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises: Recommendations on Follow-up to the Mandate, submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in February 2011. 29 Updatedinformationisavailableathttp://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/NationalActionPlans. aspx.

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