Radiant Church presents Radiant Stories, a collection of stories that showcase God's faithfulness to take our hopeless situations and craft them into beautiful testimonies of His power, provision, and love. What are we talking about today? I should have asked you that. Great question. I mean, I would love to talk about the... We kind of spoke about it when we were at your house. I'd love to talk about the process that you guys are in right now because I think you have a unique view because you obviously are not at the finish line yet. I said we start at the very beginning, like before it happened. Do you remember where we were driving when we started listening to the podcast? Yeah, you can share about that. So it was this summer, three summers ago, we started listening to a series by Ray Van Der Laan and it was all about... One of the main themes was about the desert and just the metaphor that is used frequently in the Bible about just the hard times we go through. One of the things he said was everyone goes through just an intense desert at some point in your life and if you're not going through it now, you will go through it. That's a guarantee. We both kind of looked at each other and were like, I don't think we've ever gone through a desert. Both of us had pretty easy upbrings. I mean, families that loved us and got into colleges and we both had jobs or kid was in grad school. So neither of us had really experienced anything traumatic or sorrowful and so we kind of not blew it off but just knew it was going to come. But we also kind of at that point, I feel like I had a sense that he had been preparing me or us for something deep. And four months later, something like that, we started down the path of trying to have children of our own and that's, I guess, where our story begins. Yeah, we started in November of 2016. I'll say this too in January or February, whenever have you heard of If Gathering with Jenny Allen? It's a women's conference and I attended it in Grand Rapids with some friends and at the end of the conference, she handed out stones to everyone who was significant to what the conference was about and she asked you to write down what the Holy Spirit was speaking to your heart and my word was adoption that I wrote on the rock. After that, we were still on the road to trying for a baby of our own. The first year was really hard. We heard a lot of different things, like, oh, you know, you're just stressed or you work out too much or whatever. I heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people. Everyone has their own opinion on why you're not getting pregnant or what is wrong with you. But those things are not that useful or helpful. Yeah, so then I went to my doctor and it's suggested that you go to a doctor after a year of trying if you still haven't conceived. So we went and then from there, we started our year of basically medications and procedures, fertility treatments, basically. Right. And so it was a long road. I feel like every month kind of feels like a loss because you're like hoping for something and then it doesn't happen and then you try again and you're hopeful again and then it doesn't happen. And I think the hardest part too Christmas or Mother's Day or holidays were really hard too, especially a couple of times we found out we weren't pregnant on Mother's Day or on significant holidays. Our first treatment that we'd went through was an IUI and it just seemed like it was so fitting that it was gonna work because the day that we were gonna find out if she was pregnant or not was on Mother's Day and it was a Sunday and so we were very excited to check before we went to church and it was just one of the most cruel, crushing feelings that you look at the test and it's almost like it's unbelievable that that would happen. And at that point too it's like, is God punishing us for something? Are we doing something wrong? Have we done something wrong? But it just kept going. That was the first treatment we had done and each month like Kate said was like we had lost something. But that's how it felt to me at least when we were just trying without treatments. And with treatments there's kind of this promised expectation of something greater or like it's gonna work or this is gonna give you this much better of a chance and then for each one of those to not work, that for me was just that much more difficult to make through. Especially because we don't have a diagnosis still we're told we're healthy, we're all our numbers and everything that they've checked our spot on like healthy individuals to be able to conceive. And I was really hurtful too and I remember like being at church that day and I had to like force myself to sing and force myself to even just like raise my hands a little bit just because I just remember being so upset and like you feel so forgotten in those moments too of just and then it makes you like want to forget God too as well. So we went through three rounds of IUI which are fertility treatments and those were all unsuccessful and that was really really difficult because after that they suggest if those don't work then you move on to IVF which is more invasive and that's kind of like your best option ever in the fertility world. We were really hopeful for that everything went well prepping for that so it's this past year so in September we were scheduled to have our IVF in October and in September I went to a training it was a really awesome training in the foster care system for adopted families because I was working as an occupational therapist and a lot of my kids were adopted or in foster care. I remember being at the conference and just feeling like the Lord saying like this is like what I have for you and in my mind I was like I don't want this like I have it in my job I don't want this for myself but feeling like he's giving me gifts and even in my own personality and in my own heart to be able to be a mom to kids in the foster care system Even from an early time when we started dating we wanted to adopt that was something we always expected to do but we always kind of had our own timing like yeah we'll have one or two of our own and we'll kind of evaluate and see do we want another boy or another girl we just had this expectation that things were just going to go however we planned it and obviously they haven't but that kind of played into that same thing where even with the treatments we expected like that was going to be the thing that got us over the hump and then down the road we'll consider adoption because we still wanted to but we had our own timing about it So then we were super excited we went to our first IVF procedure everything went beautifully so many people were praying for us we prayed for a church this was like the first time too that we had really shared with a lot of people openly that this is something we've been praying for two for years at that point or almost two years so it was something that we decided kind of add that moment like we need to be more vulnerable with this and just open because all of the keeping it closed and just to ourselves just made it that much more difficult to get through because people weren't praying for us we weren't in community about it and it just made it feel that much more isolating because we didn't have other people who either had been through the process or people who could encourage us about it because nobody knew about it so going into that first round we kind of pretty widespread told anybody that would pray for us that this is what we were doing and we were just 100% going into it believing God was going to do this miracle and at that point we had words spoken over us and things had happened in our own personal life of like promises God's given us about us being parents so it just like seemed like it was bound to happen and then it didn't and it was the most devastating moment I think I've ever experienced after we had you know given it some time we tried to see if we could do it again before the year ended because insurance changes for the new year and whatever thankfully we did we had enough embryos and so we're like okay they scheduled it they're like we don't normally do this but for you guys like we're gonna make it work that was like okay like we're here we go another like time to be hopeful and the stars just kind of aligned everything was just like God was definitely orchestrating this because without him setting up the timing of everything it shouldn't have actually been time-wise feasible to make this happen so it just worked out just right so that it could happen before the end of the year and so despite the fact that we were still kind of in probably the lowest low of realizing that the first round didn't work but having to go right into that second round so it was kind of a blur for me I don't really remember a ton of the specific details or even the emotions because it was still kind of numbing that pretty fast it didn't work all of this not just what we had been praying for but with so many people had been praying for and because it was so much more public that second time sorry that first time it just made it that much more difficult to now have to tell everybody it didn't work everything that you were praying for everything that we were believing for just failed and man that was that was rough were you guys pretty open about that part of it coming back to the people that you really trusted and spoken to and the people that had spoken over you were you pretty open about that part of it too or was I mean Ross you said one of the hardest things for sure it was definitely the hardest thing and yes because everyone knew when we were going to find out so even if they didn't ask you knew that that's what they were wanting to know and even if we didn't tell them they knew based on just our demeanor we didn't have a joyous spirit about us that day when they knew that that was the day we were going to find out so because everything is very planned it's not like it might be this day or that day like you go in for blood test and that determines explicitly yes or no there's no maybe let's try tomorrow so because everything was planned a lot of people knew the day that we were going to go in for the test so you did tell a lot of people some people kind of found out because we didn't say anything so they just knew it was not positive at that point too I felt like such a burden like here's another prayer request it's the same thing like I've been going up to get prayer for so long for the same thing and so that was hard for me too of just being like no it didn't work can you pray again? at some point it's just like I just don't want to ask people because it just seems like it's not working even though I know people care in your mind it's just like I don't want to be a burden the devil is deceiving during these times get in in very clever ways to make you feel like you shouldn't ask for prayer totally we've seen just isolate you more and more and realizing that too gave us more confidence to be more public that first time because all of those moments of isolation we realized that that was why we felt so depressed like the state that we were in why we were in that state so then feeling like we can combat that but then for it also not to work and not only for it to not work but we had basically like our number was basically zero which is very definitive but it was almost like there was absolutely no chance that that was going to work which was to me because I'm an engineer I'm analytical like the numbers mean something like that was devastating for me alone just because it felt like that was it's not going to work period so then we did our second round of IVF right before Christmas and it was successful we found out we were pregnant so you do a blood test and then two days later you do another one to make sure that your numbers are increasing for pregnancy and so that was like I'll never forget that day I like went and surprised Ross at his work to tell him and he was gone so that was awesome I remember our celebrations and I remember my cry was different this deep emotion of longing I was like thank you Jesus we're finally worked and then asked for prayer again from friends and I should mention that the nurse was like your your number is low she wanted me to be aware of that it wasn't like super high but it was in the range of pregnancy it was well over the mark for clinical pregnancy so it wasn't on the border where they're like yeah probably isn't going to work but it was still below the number that they like to see it but still for us this was the first time we had any inkling of hope that our bodies work physiologically this could happen so we kind of took it as like it worked so then I went two days later to do the blood test and found out that it didn't work and the numbers didn't increase it was just like another like oh my gosh like here we are yet again and this is I'm just having that that I think felt the most cruel to me of just like God like why would you allow that like why didn't you just do the zero number again like why would you even give me a glimpse of of that hope and I think anybody who experiences miscarriage or loss can relate to that feeling of just like why like and the answers I'm never going to know why like that's it's just something painful and it happens in our broken world and that at that point I was like I'm done like this I'm so over this already feel like a failure my body can't work I felt like a failure for Ross and our marriage a lot of feelings of disappointment and those can turn into you know bitterness and just felt very very forgotten for sure I remember like just praying like why did you give me these desires in my heart like this whole my whole life like I've been a nanny I've been around children I work in pediatrics I love child development I feel like God created me to be a mom and and so I remember praying like God just make me more of like a businesswoman like make me more of like something I'm not because this is really hurtful that you would like create me like this and I can't like inward and you're not letting it happen like you know just change change it up like I'm willing to give it up and do something else if that's what you want me to do I think part of the hardness to is clinically it's considered a miscarriage and despite the chemical pregnancy at that point yeah but just the the poignancy of the words that are used when you are pregnant and then it doesn't work like that seemed like it was just another one of the times that it didn't work but for it to have technically happened we had a child and then it didn't survive that was another moment where it just kind of had a heightened sense of emotion to it that we just had a miscarriage and I think the time we went to do our post-op with the specialist and that was what he reiterated many times and I think the point for him doing that was to encourage us that it did work like it your body did work but the more he said like you had a miscarriage just made it that much more difficult to realize what had just happened and I don't think either of us had really processed that occurrence until that appointment where we realized truly what had happened and so that just made going into Christmas again another one of those times where it's supposed to be joyful that much more difficult so now the story gets really good I promise this has been part one of Kate and Ross's story we'll be back next Monday with more of their testimony


So everyone, welcome back after the break, after enjoying the famous Viennese coffee and other refreshments. Today, it's my honor and my personal privilege, I have to say, to be the chair of the first panel. My name is Julia Meyer, and I'm the head of the White Collargrime Department at Toda Brokerschoris Rechtsanwälte. It's one of the big four law firms in Austria and I'm also the co-head of the Litigation Department. And as a lawyer being specialized in litigation in civil law, criminal law and environmental law, I'm totally excited today due to two reasons. First, the topic we are talking about.  Oh God, yes, we are. And what are the challenges for victims, representatives? And what do we see in national jurisdictions? And how shall we overcome these challenges and how shall we improve the system? So this is the topic we are focusing on today in the first panel. And the second reason to be so excited today is the panelists. Two reasons for that again, diversity and experience. It's very rare to have such diversity on a panel, starting with criminal law and criminal justice, human rights and environmental law, NGOs experience in all that areas of law, and also seeing civil law and commercial law being representative on this panel. So it will be very, very exciting to hear all about that. I would like to introduce the speaker to you in the order we will hear them today, starting with Alvin Deering. Hello, welcome to the panel. He's now at the Fundamental Rights Agency and his program manager research for criminal law and criminal justice. He has an extensive working experience before that. He was in Austrian ministries. He was also implementing projects for the European Commission in Poland, Croatia and Turkey. And he was also legal assistant at the European Court of Justice. Welcome to the panel. The second speaker, Inge Güve. She is the head of the Human Rights and Environmental Law Practice at Housefield and COLLP in London. She has tremendous experience in bringing group actions, test cases, regarding the areas of environmental law, climate justice, pollution, land crapping, mining. So where shall I stop? And it's not limited to Europe. No, she has experience in Australia, in Africa, in Asia, recently with Vietnam. So we are very interested in hearing what she can tell us out of her really huge and fast experience. Welcome to the panel, Ingrid. Third speaker, Yvonne Veidt. Bringing the NGO perspective to it all. In 2007, she joined the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. She's also a representative of the Human Rights Network Menschenrechte, Forum Menschenrechte. And she is an expert in OSCEID guidelines, bringing casing in this respect, also focusing on liability of major companies. Before that, she was a lawyer in Berlin. So welcome, Yvonne.  In 1991, he became appointed to be a judge in Vienna. In 2006, he become a Supreme Court judge in Austria. He's also a professor for civil and commercial law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. And he published extensively in the field of civil and commercial law as well as civil procedure. Welcome to the panel. So starting with Almin. Almin, Fundamental Rights Agency experience. What did you see in respect to criminal liability to holding companies liable? And can you give us a know of you on the case law in this respect? And what do the numbers show? Ingrid, thanks very much for the very nice introduction. And yes, I would like to share some views that we have at the agency. Starting by recalling that the issue is not that new, actually, one of the first examples of international human rights law was the response to a commercially oriented severe human rights violation. And I'm talking of the international efforts to outlaw and to abolish slave trade. In a sense, slave trade represented and actually still represents today one of the worst forms of human rights abuses committed by private enterprises that operate at a transnational scale. To end, slave trade, abolitionists convinced governments to conclude a series of international treaties that obliged the states to punish slave traders even independent of whether the act is punishable in the territory where the offense was committed, and which also allowed law enforcement to cease vessels used for the commission of the crime. My contribution will focus on this area of severe labor exploitation of foreign workers. And the reason is that we conducted a project on severe labor exploitation of foreign workers, and that is the report that was published in June, and I've brought a couple of copies with me, and I will share with you some of the findings from that project. Before I do so, I would like to recall that under international law, and in particular under the law of the European Convention on Human Rights, there are obligations of states to criminalize severe human rights violations, and actually one of the first cases that made that clear was the case of MC versus Bulgaria, which was a rape case, and where the court found positive obligations on the state are inherent in the right to effective respect for private life under Article VIII of the Convention. While the choice of the means to secure compliance with Article VIII in the sphere of protection against acts of individuals is in principle within the state's margin of appreciation, effective deterrence against grave acts, such as rape, where fundamental values and essential aspects of private life are at stake, requires efficient criminal law provisions. Further on, court says on that basis, the court considers that states have a positive obligation inherent in Article III and VIII of the Convention to enact criminal law provisions, effectively punishing rape and to apply them in practice through effective investigation and prosecution. Now rape is probably not the typical offense in our context, however this formula was then later used by the court in Strasbourg in various cases actually, and I've found a recent case which was decided in September 2013, which is the Agievi versus Russia case, and that case concerned a couple who had adopted two children and one of the children burned himself by boiling water apparently. The scene was not witnessed by the parents when they detected that he had red scars on his face, they brought him to the hospital, and the hospital shared information about the situation of that child with the public, with media, and the applicants actually complained that the Russian government, authorities of law enforcement and prosecution did not do enough to carry out proceedings, criminal proceedings against the hospital and the media. And the court says, the court notes that the applicants' allegations concerned the unauthorized communication of confidential information about a minor's adoption status because that was particularly hurtful to the parents that the public was informed that their children were actually adopted, and were supported by Primafazia evidence. In practical terms, the applicants acting on their own without benefit of the state's assistance in the form of an official inquiry had no effective means of establishing the perpetrators of these acts, proving the involvement of the sex successfully bringing proceedings against them in domestic courts. In the eyes of the court, this is a case where fundamental values and essential aspects of private life are at stake and where effective deterrence is indispensable and can be achieved primarily by criminal law provisions and the application through effective investigation and prosecution. So in this case, the passing on of information from the hospital to the media and the publication of this information by the media was considered a matter of, a matter that required criminal law provisions and protection of individuals against infringements, violations of these rights under Article 8 by criminal law provisions. So the court then concludes that the investigation conducted by the domestic authorities so far has failed to comply with the requirements of that convention provision and found unanimously a violation of Article 8. This brings me to the SELIX project. The SELIX project was on the severe exploitation of foreign workers in the EU, and I have to stress that. We did not so far look into situations of workers exploited, the benefit of countries of companies, sorry, based in the EU happening abroad, maybe later on we will have opportunity to look into that. So far, we've only looked into exploitation within the EU of foreign workers, where foreign workers also includes, and very prominently includes cases of EU citizens moving from one member state to the other. One of the things we found is that we had, from the cases that we identified in the project, about 50% of let's say EU internal work migration compared to third country nation is exploited. It was a combination of risk research and fieldwork research. It was 616 interviews conducted with professionals, 212 case studies that were analyzed, 26 focus group discussions carried out and so on. So it was a fairly extensive project, and the results are published in this report, which I've already shown to you on severe labor expectation happening within the EU. In the last phase of the project, we also did desk research on the sanctions that are enacted in what is legislation member states, against employers meaning against those companies that employ foreign workers. And I would like to just share with you as the end of my contribution, some figures or some recites from that, and unfortunately I still have to go back to the raw data because so far we haven't published anything as for the first time that I've actually compiled this data. We found they are so abstract and quite technical that they don't really fit into a report that addresses the general public. But I would like to share some of our findings with you. The first is of course about liability of legal persons, and I was quite surprised to find that not all EU member states is even a legal basis for holding legal persons liable in Bulgaria and Estonia. I understand that there is no legal basis for that at all. And in some members states, for instance, in the Netherlands it's restricted to administrative fines, administrative offenses. When it comes to civil labor exploitation, we found that in a couple of states, while companies can be held to account for the illegal employment of migrant workers who are in a irregular situation of residence, they cannot be held to account for the exploitation of these workers. Are penalties effective and proportionate and dissuasive? In practice, the answer is in general no, and the reason is the lack of implementation of the legislation that is in place, and I will say a little bit about that. The employer sanctions directive, I think, is very powerful in suggesting various means of sanctioning employers, of sanctioning companies to exploit foreign workers. And one of the options, or one of the things that are suggested to member states is to publish a list of employers who have been found liable for labor exploitation, such a list being made public. And in seven member states, this would be possible. In one member state we found that it's also done, and that's France, but apparently that is the exception. Another sanction would be the exclusion of a company from entitlement to some or all public benefits, and the legal regulations that it would allow for such a measure are available in 17 member states, so a clear majority of member states does foresee that employers who are convicted for exploitation of foreign workers would be excluded from public benefits. The same situation we find when it comes to exclusion from participation, a public contract for up to five years, that's what, again, what the directive would suggest to member states, and 18 member states have implemented that, and as you see, 10 haven't. Then there's a possibility of temporarily or permanently closing an establishment. Only 16 member states have acted on that. Yes. There is the employer sanctions directive foresees that member states should provide for the possibility to temporarily or permanently withdraw a license that was used by the employer in carrying out the business in the course of which the work is where exploited, and 19 member states have actually enacted such regulations. There is additional measures under the trafficking directive, but I will leave that out now, except for one, because that has not been much implemented. Four to five member states have used these additional means, eight, however, foresee that the proceeds of crime or the instruments used for the commission of crimes can be seized, so that I think is more popular. As the last thing, I would, yeah, I would just like to highlight what is important from the view of workers exploited as back payment. That's something that came out very clearly in the research we conducted, and actually there is a means for workers to ask for back payment made to them within the framework of the criminal proceedings, and that's implemented or legally the provisions are in place in the vast majority of member states. Actually, only two member states don't foresee the possibility of having back payments provided to the workers in the course of criminal proceedings. So overall, I would say there is some legislation in place, but what really lacks when it comes to employer sanctions for the exploitation of foreign workers is implementation. Thank you very much. Thanks, Almin. Ingrid, what experience do you take out of all your cases you handle? Can you please share a little bit of that experience and give us an insight on cases you deal with? I don't have an insight on that. Oh, it's on. Oh, it's on. Hello? Yeah. Thank you to the Isaac Boltzmann Institute for inviting us to this very important event and with very eminent panelists all through the day. So we look forward to it contributing where we can. I thought it was very interesting. I just have to start with Albie because just to say that it highlights something I was going to suggest, which is this sectoral approach. It seems that all through the year in the business and human rights world, whether it's been on the ground running the cases or at the policy levels of G7 at the OECD and so on, what we're seeing more and more is we're happy to look at it from an implementing stage through a sectoral approach. So you've just highlighted the plight of foreign workers as high on your agenda. And I think what would be interesting too is to see how we get this onto the high up on the agenda. But so I saw that in the garment industry after Rana Plaza and we're starting to see it in other sectors. And so I just wanted to start with that. Now, I'm leaping far ahead of what I'm supposed to be doing, which is talking to you about cases. And I think the two most relevant cases that we've filed over the last year, I'll talk a little bit briefly about those and from the UK perspective, in terms of the common law jurisdiction rather than, and so there'll be some resonances, no doubt, for the civil jurisdictions, but obviously I'm mindful of the fact that they are quite different species. So in tort, we have two very large cases that fall into this category, which are a case, it's public knowledge, it's on the record, we have a case against Unilever for allegations around problems with the health and safety of factory workers, of a factory run in Chennai in India and by the subsidiary Hindustan Leaver. And the second case is in Zambia. We are one of two firms that are running cases against Vedanta and the subsidiary KCM. And so we filed that in back in early July and we're currently working on that. So these cases are not for the faint hearted, let's put it that way, in terms of the investment, which I think has been highlighted in Karen's introduction, they are very big in terms of having to get expert evidence to gather claimants in the United Kingdom. We have a group procedure, but it is unlike the US, it is an opt-in procedure, which means that you have to register everybody, interview very big samples. We have over a thousand claimants in the KCM case, which means there's a lot of work on the ground in the villages. And a byproduct of that too, is that you meet logistical issues in setting up the teams on the ground. You try to do small improvements along the way in the villages, for instance, all the boreholes are not working, so you're working with other NGOs like WaterAid and so on with propositions to try and rehabilitate the boreholes. But clearly our issue is not just legal, it's much bigger than legal. And I guess we've had these conversations with various people here and beyond. Law is just one of the tools here, but we have to work with multi-disciplinary teams, of experts, hydrologists, toxicologists, agronomists, a whole range of people. Why is that? Because the standards of proof have to be so high when we're talking about causation, when we're talking about the duty of care, and we're talking about all of the traditional legal principles, which obviously are out of step in many ways with the kinds of cases we are trying to bring. So we're stuck with this issue here of what the research project is about and what other research projects are about are, okay, what are the legal issues in terms of duty of care, reversal of the owners of proof, group actions, procedural change, and so there's a whole bundle of things here. But I think what we're trying to do is work at the pointy end, which is the accountability stream through the judicial means, whereas obviously in strategic litigation, we're also dealing with grievance mechanisms, non-judicial mechanisms, a whole range of levers that will also assist the judicial process at various times. So obviously there's a whole range of tools which have to be implemented and strategic litigators will use and advise around a whole range of these mechanisms. But obviously the law is only as good as the tools, and so we are always constantly trying to help with evolving and developing those areas. When it comes to the duty of care, yes, in the UK, of course, we've had the Chandler case, which in circumscribed cases extends the duty in situations of employment. So then people have said, well, should we then put it in statute? Should we have a statutory kind of reform process where we put it in a prescribed form? And of course the issue there is that once you do that, your corporate lawyer or your defense lawyer is gonna find ways around it very quickly. So it might work in some jurisdictions, I don't see it working very well in a common law jurisdiction to have prescribed law around duty of care. Because you want that duty of care to extend beyond the issue of employment. You want it to extend to all the people who are affected by the harm. So I think that's important. And of course in the reversal of proof issues, which of course is also being analyzed, people are thinking about that as another reform thing, is that you have your prima facie evidence, which shows that there's systemic problems, that there's been terrible harm. And you hope then that we can reverse the proof onto the defendant to show that they haven't caused the harm. The problem there is that they then produce a tick box of due diligence saying, well, this is all the reasonable things we did, therefore we're not liable. And I know that's attractive to people to say, okay, let's reverse the owners of proof, let's have a tick box of due diligence and let the company come off of that. But obviously that has to be treated very cautiously as well. So while we're looking at these reforms, I think it's important that you have all the right people in that process so that these dangers are highlighted. So that brings me to comparative law. So the hub of our firm is competition law and competition, we only work on the claimant side. That cross subsidizes the human rights environmental departments, but it also gives us an insight into how the corporate law and commercial law and reforms in competition world and those areas are evolving measures which may have some value in this area. So shared information, transparency, shared enforcement, a whole range of things that are available in the competition world and only in the last five years may well be measures that can be adopted more easily because they already exist. So that's quite important. But obviously the reforms that the corporate law end and directors duties. So some of them are following models of purpose where you have looking at the objects of corporate law, that there is a social aspect to that. So humanizing corporate law and the company's law across jurisdictions. Obviously that is attractive as well because we're bringing in directors duties, we're bringing in focus from shareholders, looking at what the directors are doing and of course that's part of the way we work, looking very much at financial directors and shareholders as a tool that we're working on as well. And of course, I just wanted to say that to end here is it's very much a victim or claimant approach so that it's from the bottom up, not from the lawyer end because that's where I think we go wrong is that quite often we start looking at reforms and trying to implement things because we think they're legally possible or might be possible across different states and we forget that at the remedies end, the victims end, it's just not gonna work. So it's extremely important to keep that as a focus and bring our remedies, our reforms in remedies very much from that focus. And so I would encourage, if it was one thing to take away, would be procedural change in group actions because as I understand it, member states have the law, there are possibilities of bringing these actions but there are not the procedural tools in which to do it. So you might have a test case or you might have a lead case but when it comes to actually remedies for a large number of victims, unless you are going to achieve it through non-judicial means and that means early on and preserving their rights if they have legal rights before they even enter into the grievance mechanism as though I know other people will speak about that later. It's important that there is some kind of group procedure otherwise having the law and changing it is not going to really amount to a great deal. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ingrid. Heaps of questions spring to the mind. Especially in Austo, we really have, we really face huge challenges regarding group actions. I can say from my day-to-day perspective, your quote I can definitely add on that. And going to Yvonne. Yvonne, please add something of the NGO perspective to all of that. How did you select cases? How do you decide what is a case to bring in? And how do you do that? And how do you prepare for that? And what are your challenges? And how do you decide in the end? Yes, thank you very much. And thank you also to the Ludwig-Wolzmann Institute for having invited me and for giving me the chance to share our experiences in this really interesting training. I would like to start to very briefly introduce the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which I work for. It's a small but growing NGO in Berlin. It has been founded in 2008 and we are trying to enforce human rights by legal means. We have two major programs, the International Criminal Accountability Program where we focus on state actors, human rights violations and the business and human rights program where we look at human rights violations committed by transnational companies. Well, how do we build our cases? We have been throughout the years constantly organizing workshops in the regions where human rights violations by companies typically occurred. We had workshops in Colombia and Cameroon and India and in the Philippines. And there we work together with local and international NGOs, lawyers and also representatives of the affected communities. And these workshops always give us the opportunity to very intensely legally analyze a high number of individual cases. And all in all, I think we have looked in over 100 of such cases but only very few of them have led to civil or criminal complaints or OECD complaints. And many of these few have been closed or rejected by prosecutors or national contact points in a quite early stage. So what makes it so difficult to bring a strong case if there are so many human rights violations by companies identified? For us, the main criteria, of course, is that every case must in any way help and support the affected persons. This is not always easy because, as I said, all our cases, most of our cases, do not deliver very quick positive results of positive results compensation or court rulings, but a good case can always have another positive results such as it can trigger the social and political discourse in the country where the infringement has occurred. But for this, it is very crucial that the civil society in the country is willing and able to develop a known strategy on the case and to work on the results of the case in the EU. Another prerequisite for legal action always is that the state where the harm occurs has a minimum level of structure because national and local government investigations and prosecutions are often the basis for the proceedings that are conducted in Europe. And the same applies for civil society. Civil society in the country must, for example, in logistical terms be able to bring victim groups together to make own investigations and to transport evidence safely. Another key factor is that there must be sufficient evidence to prove the allegations. But unfortunately, it is typical for human rights violations committed by companies that they are very difficult to prove only to give you two examples. The complex organization and technical procedures and decision-making processes within companies are usually not accessible for the affected persons. And when you look at environment cases, for example, the causal link between the company's emission and the health damage with the affected persons is also very difficult to prove. So what happens if we have decided to bring a case? All our complaints require a very intensive and experienced preparation. This means use of intensive cooperation with the partners, with the local partners and the affected persons. This means several research trips on the ground to talk to victims and to document their statements. And if possible, we always try to support legal proceedings within the country as well. Well, yes, I think you also wanted me to tell something about how we raise funding. Yes, and I could say only some words on that. So most of our cases are funded by private foundations. But indeed, it is very difficult to raise funding, especially if these cases involve large costs for lawyers and court costs. And what we do, we try to hold these court costs low by, for example, in the compensation claim against the German retailer, Kick. We chose out of a large number of 190 affected persons, only four claimants. And also, I have to stress that we couldn't do any, we couldn't do any case at all without the support of pro bono lawyers. Well, thank you very much. You want to thank you all for that. Thanks very much for your explanations. I can only really share your experience with you, you said it's a year-long struggle, either in criminal investigation proceedings or in civil litigation, and it is definitely cost intensive. And then going to the Austrian side, Gio Kodak, we could speak one and a half days constantly about group actions in Austria, couldn't we? Yeah, thank you. You mentioned group actions and for the benefit of those of you who are not Austrian. I'm the person who drafted what was supposed to be, and I use that word advisedly, that was supposed to be the Austrian group action proceeding and was supposed to be, again I'm using that word, the Civil Procedure Reform Bill of 2007. Now, again for the benefit of the non-Austrians among us, that bill has not been voted on yet because unfortunately it became an issue of party politics. And in spite of my repeated attempts to take it away from party politics, and I stressed that the class action was not invented in the GDR, but in the US basically, that was not helpful so we have now a split between Socialist, Democrats, and Conservatives. And that is a full practical purpose, is a deadlock. Now, so we currently, we do have workarounds, but we do not have a formal group action proceeding. Now, you mentioned I'm a sitting judge, but I have to admit here in Austria we do not have an actual practical experience with foreign human rights violations taken before Austrian civil courts, but obviously since I'm also an academic lawyer, I try to look into what's going on in other countries. Now, we, our schedule says we are to talk about jurisdiction, now when we talk about jurisdiction, I'm afraid we are putting the cart before the horse. So to speak, because at least from a civil law perspective, first of all, we should think about what rights are we talking about, which is not easy in a human rights context when we talk about rights vis-a-vis not governmental entities, but vis-a-vis private corporations. We should ask ourselves, well, not only what rights are we talking about, but whose rights are we talking about, whose claims, and very important against whom. And all these questions are by no means easy. You are obviously aware that certainly from a civil law point of view, subsidiaries, corporate subsidiaries are separate legal entities and the European Court of Justice has repeatedly affirmed that. So it's very difficult to find reasons to pierce the corporate veil in this context and it's as difficult and maybe more difficult than in other contexts. So we have to create rules of attribution, of actions of subsidiaries to the parent and because normally only the parent will be found in the European Union. So these are only some of the legal issues we are facing here. We obviously also face a lot of practical issues and some of these issues and the complexity of these cases has become apparent from the previous speakers. We are talking about countries far away, such as Nigeria and India and some others. Normally all the evidence will be located there. It is by no means certain that an infrastructure will be present for gathering reliable evidence in a fashion that will be recognized by the courts. We are talking about witnesses living abroad. We are talking about foreign languages and so forth. All these are difficulties and to overcome these difficulties is certainly not impossible but comes at a tremendous cost. And so the question will come up, who is it who is supposed to pay for these proceedings if we open our courts as a forum for human rights violations worldwide? Is it the Austrian or European taxpayer or is it someone else? And just one brief remark in closing. It's interesting that we have this debate at present in Europe, just at a time when the United States is moving into a different direction. You may be aware that just two years ago, the US Supreme Court in two well-known cases in Cairo Bell, which was a Nigerian case and in Daimler Bauman, which was a case about events that occurred in Argentina, effectively closed the doors of American courts for practical purposes. So I'm not saying we should just simply adopt this approach because we don't follow the US Supreme Court in other incidents but certainly this is a development which should make us think twice at least before introducing something similar here in Austria. Thank you. Thank you, Geo-Koenig, for summarizing so much on the group action we have in Austria. We don't have in Austria so far and also for citing recent case law in the US. Albin, going back to severe labor explanation. In Austria, we just had enacted a law in 2006 holding companies really criminal liable. Can you maybe please focus a little bit on criminal liability of companies? Like you said, in some member states you see that there is not even an implementation of that, how is it applied through a... Well, I'm not sure I'm the right person to speak on the Austrian situation actually because of course we deal with all issues from a European perspective, European Union perspective. However, I do know that the Austrian for Banz-Fantz-Walikowski said so, yeah. Law on liability of legal persons is not very effective. I think there are hardly cases of what I heard recently and that's also what we found. Actually I have also case law compiled. It was just not the time but that is quite sobering, I have to say. Maybe it's five or six countries where we were in a position to identify case law in the context, I mean case law holding legal persons accountable for exploiting foreign workers and Austria is not among them, unfortunately. So that's I think the situation really on the ground. If I could just maybe use the opportunity to make one comment. I think it's very much about sexual sectoral approach. I think that is exactly what we need and we'd just like to reflect on one thing. Why it is that criminal law could be an option or actually if you take the employer sanction effective is an option in the context of labor expectation is that criminal law is very good when it comes to intentional human rights abuses. So when it's not about, well, yeah, the duties on corporations to deal, act in a diligent manner when it comes to what they pay to workers, the hours that workers have to work and all that, of course, well enterprises know and for that reason I think this is an area where criminal law can be effective. In many other contexts when it's about damages done to the environment, et cetera, there will very often not be intentional human rights abuses there and then I think criminal law is not the instrument. Criminal law has simply been not constructed to deal with these cases very much and I think it's not very powerful. By the way, one thing I would like to add is that if it's about the divide between civil law and criminal law, people tend to think about sanctions in terms of the traditional sanctions meaning people being sent to prison. That is a mistake, that is surely a mistake because people being sent to prison is not the ordinary reaction of the criminal justice system nowadays. It's much more people paying money or people not being conditionally only sentenced, et cetera. Criminal law could be very powerful in having all these additional sanctions, the basis, being the basis for these additional sanctions which this employer sanctions directive actually comes up with which is restricting, let's say I mean withdrawing licenses or excluding companies from the public tenders, so I think there's a wide range of sanctions that could be used once the offender is convicted. Thank you, and Dan. Ingrid, turning to you again, sectional approach you said and also you mentioned something really, really important in the practice field. You talked about standard of proof and in civil law it's always with the claimant and in criminal law it's always with investigation issues like you said, even like you mentioned, cases being closed at an early stage in investigation proceedings. So Ingrid, standard of proof, can you enlighten us a little bit in this respect? I certainly will get to you. But I just have to respond to Albie just slightly too. And very valuable input around sanctions and I think there's a lot of work to be done and research around how that might overlap. Also, obviously on the civil side we would call foreseeability, foreseeability of risk and the extension of foreseeability obviously is a real possibility in terms of, there has been all this discussion as I was saying about duty of care but when we unpack that and look at the elements and say well actually, duty of care is a whole, maybe a more difficult unpalatable way to go though it may not. If we were to unpack that and look at the foreseeability of risk then I think an extension's there and increments there. I think that might be more possible. So on the civil side that's probably where we would put a lot more of our efforts. In terms of standard of proof, yeah, I mean clearly, I was going to say this, the cases we've had in the UK have been fabulously leading cases and very important cases but they have only assisted very few people of the greater areas. So it hasn't actually provided remedy to everyone affected and they're often affected in the same way but because the standard of proof in terms of experts of evidence and so on is so ring fenced and so narrow in terms of getting to that level it means that you can create inequities amongst victim groups because certain villages will be included in the settlement, certain others will be excluded and they might just be one mile down the road and so you have this terrible issue because they happen to be closer to the source of the contaminant and the experts are able to raise the standard of causation. So yeah, we have this issue about causation. I touched on this earlier about reversal of the onus of proof and of course that's where it comes in is the discussion has been in terms of the reform program, do we get it to a point where there's primer facie enough proof and then the onus is on the defendant to show that they took all of the reasonable steps? That is one of the ideas but that there is an issue there around a much higher level of proof than perhaps we need in these cases. Thank you for that, Ingrid. Yvonne, you stressed a lot of points. One, you mentioned very quickly the click case. Can you give us a little bit of details on that please? The click case refers to the first compensation law that has been filed in Germany against a German retailer by four Pakistani affected persons of a factory fire in Pakistan where more than 250 person died and Kik was the major buyer of that factory and had in advance audited several times itself the factory but the fire broke out because when the fire broke out the fire exit were barred and the windows were locked. So and this case is interesting because for us it was the first time we were able to file a criminal civil lawsuit because the community of the affected persons and their 190 persons, their survivors or relatives of the victims and they are organized very well. They have a political aim and so this is why they were able to choose out of them four persons that would file the claim in Germany, we wouldn't have been able to file the claim with 190 persons whereas we were not able for example in the Lamaya case, this is an infrastructure dam case where the flooding took place before the communities had left the ground and where we had more than 4,000 victims widespread in the area who just were not able and couldn't agree on only a few persons to bring the case and so we couldn't in that case bring the civil case although it would have been a good case. Thank you Juan. So to make a connection between one kick case and what GeoCodex said attribution piercing the corporate whale in Austria, any experience on that and any details on that? Well yes but not in the context of international human rights violations. Obviously there is a huge body of doctrine in corporate law dealing with attribution in various contexts. The fundamental question probably is what is the duty of care? What is the proper standard here? What duties are we talking about and only when you answer that you could tell well who is responsible there and is it a duty owed by the parent company or not? And if the answer is well it is a duty owed by the parent company then attribution is quite simple. If the answer is no but the higher you get up in the well corporate chain of command so to speak the duties become different. There would be just a duty well to make proper instructions to take some precautions and so forth. Defense will become a lot easier. So defense is easier generally. The more removed the defendinies from the actual source of the damage. And I don't see a possibility, certainly I don't see an easy solution to that. Thank you for that, me neither unfortunately. So focusing on the analysis what shall we amend? What shall we do about it? Where should we change? What shall we change, shall we? We should adopt a sectoral approach first of all. Not try to do everything at one time. I think that's really important otherwise I don't think we'll get very far. It seems to me quite striking that actually you can be effective on the civil law path or on the criminal law path in various sectors and various contexts and I have to say we are just next year starting a second project on civil labor expectation for foreign workers and I think you just have to really keep going on a certain topic and try to highlight that. I mean I've been in the last two months, three times to Italy, one in Torino in Milano and on Monday in Rome. So it's gradually picking up, there is more interest and there are more politicians starting to ask questions about why has nothing happened. And there are now journalists. One journalist from Torino just spent three days at one of the vineyards being exploited with another 70 workers from Romania and Bulgaria and of course that creates wonderful stories and more people are aware of the problems. More people are aware that even expensive wines are produced under conditions of severe exploitation. So it's not true that's only about the very cheap products and so on. I think that that's how things will develop, bringing it from a very abstract level to concrete cases and sectors where people can understand what you're talking about. Thank you. Ingrid, sectorial approach, the solution to it all. Antibribery and Corruption Act UK and that has an extra territorial element to it and that's quite important because it crosses over into quite a lot of other activities. The Modern Slavery and Trafficking Act obviously come into force and those cases are being prepared. So and now the garment workers obviously became to run a plaza, the G7 was all about that and all the politicians were awake and Germany was awake and leading the charge and of course as you say, it had a horizontal effect to all the politicians in the other member states. So I think once we get the politicians waking up and the journalists involved and the documentary makers and all the people that we work in strategic litigation of this kind and our partners involved, that's when you start getting these results and that does seem to be that it's the sectorial approach which is more palatable because as you say, it proffers more concrete examples but the extractive industries is difficult. It is one of the most egregiously harmful and is having a lot of problems, at least a quarter of the earth is affected by horrible contamination of which I've witnessed and I'm sure many other people here have witnessed but what I would like is for coach loads of directors to go down to the pits and visit the communities direct and it's a simple act, it doesn't cost a lot of money, go holiday at the pits. English, thank you so much. Thank you also for bringing up the anti-corruption laws and that respect in Austria. We have very recently seen a huge reform and the corruption side as well. We also get a huge, now far broader, a broad regard in corruption and international jurisdiction in Austria, unseen before, honestly speaking, so we are really hoping on that. Yvonne, how should gaps be filled for NGOs? What can we do in disrespect? What would be necessary? What do you think is a challenge? Well, maybe for us the most important thing would be that prosecutors have better resources, financial and personal resources, but also better training on these international high complex cases. I think that would already help us very much. And then we think that the content and the extent of due diligence, obligations of parent companies for their suppliers and subsidiaries should be clearly defined by law. Then we think that the catalog of protected legal interests under civil law should be extended and should include, for example, the conservation of fundamental natural resources and the protection against inhumane working conditions because this would allow victims of, for example, poisoned drinking water to file criminal claims without waiting until they suffer actual bodily harm. Then it must be ensured that any reform of German law in this case would be applicable to these sort of cases because under the Rome II regulation, the Rome II regulation for the time being establishes that for these transnational tort cases, the law of the state where the harm occurs would be applicable, so this should be made sure. And then regarding the burden of proof, Germany should allow all affected parties to secure the disclosure of relevant information from the opposing party through discovery rules like there are, I think, in the UK and the US. We don't have any of such regulations and we don't have either the possibility, any possibility for large victim groups to group their complaints together. We also belong to the countries that have no corporate criminal law, Germany, we Germany, and I think that should be introduced alternatively the existing possibilities for imposing financial sanctions under administrative laws should be applied more consequently and extended on further sanctions apart from financial sanctions. So this is the major points. Iman, thank you so much for sharing that. I can wholeheartedly agree with you, especially with disclosure. I mean, we see that it's always a problem in Austria and Germany in this respect. And also, like you said, resources up to prosecutors, information being passed on and stuff like this, I can totally agree on that, so thank you for that. Turning to Austria, what can we do? How shall we fill the gaps? What is the next steps? Well, I'm not sure what the next step will be obviously. You mentioned disclosure, discovery proceedings. Well, a long time ago, I think maybe 15 years ago, there was a proposal on the table in Austria being called the Environmental Liability Act. And that act, in case you don't know it, you have not missed anything. It was never voted on by parliament. And that had in it disclosure provisions, discovery provisions. Now, more recently, we got discovery provisions in competition proceedings, in cartel proceedings, because the European Union directive requires them. Now, that may be a starting point. Now, we are getting used to these procedures so they could be expanded. So clearly, this does not happen overnight, but that is a possibility. And maybe two short additional comments. What can courts do in this context? Or what can courts proceedings achieve here? And I'm very glad you used the term strategic litigation. And clearly, our court system could not handle all cases of human rights violations worldwide. That is not possible in our strength. Would not even be possible in Germany or in England, which are much bigger jurisdictions. But it could be possible to employ this device strategically and thereby create public awareness. This is an issue you mentioned. And that, indeed, may build up pressure that is felt by large corporations. And maybe one we talked about, I think we all agree we need several devices, several mechanisms on several levels. Now, one possibility, one additional possibility would be corporate, well, self-commitment. And that could be enforced by ways of unfair trade practice actions here in Austria if a company violates such commitments. And that could turn out to be a very effective marketing device if a company says, well, voluntarily, we make sure that all companies down the chain, be they subsidiaries or be they independent suppliers, have to adhere to certain standards. Now, that's just a suggestion. Thanks for that, Yvonne. Sure, please, go ahead. I make a short remark. So we also do a strategic litigation, but we don't do it for the sake of itself, but we do it for make the way free for other human rights cases that are not strategic in Germany. And so this is our goal, that all these cases will be possible to be brought in Germany. And other European countries. I'll then want something to add. Yeah, very briefly, react to the issue of disclosure. In our report, we've tried to highlight the right of consumers to know, as we call it, the right of consumers to understand the risk of investing by purchasing a certain product into exploitation. Actually, in two member states, there were very similar cases about poultry being raised in a way that was acceptable to the poultry, but not to the workers working with them. That was happy eggs in the UK. And it was Tony Freiland, something like that, in Austria. And in both cases, it definitely showed that the chicken were treated much nicer than the workers. And it was not about the happiness of the workers, but happiness of chicken. And in these respects, I think we need more social branding on fair work, because so far that's not been much on the agenda, but I think that's something that consumers should have a right to be in a position at least to avoid that they invest in such a place. Well, that's a great example. So the chicken was happy. The worker was unhappy. The egg, we're not sure. But I just wanted to also just say, talk quickly about the legal culture and us lawyers and working in companies and I've had various discussions with various people about sharing risk. Obviously some jurisdictions are better at partnering with other law firms or other partners, NGOs, activists, so on, so that risk can be shared, work can be shared, knowledge can be shared. And that isn't happening enough. There's only a handful of lawyers who are working in this for obvious reasons. There are quite a number of activists working in the area. And there are a huge number of people affected. And I think that we're often in silos and we're not reaching out to each other enough and there needs to be a lot more partnering. And I'd like to see focus on partnering us more where possible, because we can only do so much as a law firm. Any law firm can only do so much in reaching out. We're approached by lots of people. Often it can be inappropriate to be partnered, but there are many appropriate partnerships and which could benefit both all of those people involved, what I wanted to say. Thanks so much. Partnering, reaching out. May I open the floor for discussion? So if there are any questions, I think there are microphones, so please just raise your hand, state your name, pose your questions and the panellists are definitely happy to answer. It's important for the recording. It's on. Just put it. This is confusing. Thank you anyway. Because we're off on the internet, for instance. Now as a scholar of jurisdiction, I've got two short questions which are a little bit self-serving, but mostly to Ms. Kodak on your comment on jurisdiction. Now, first of all, I'm aware that there's at least one American lawyer in the room, so what I'm going to say might be a bit dangerous for me at least, but I was sort of struck by your comments on Q-Bell and the Bauman case, because first of all, I don't necessarily believe that closed the avenue for these types of cases in the U.S. rather it has taken the U.S. tradition a little bit more closer to how these cases are approached in Europe, especially on the jurisdiction part, only allowing cases that really will touch and concern the U.S., to quote Q-Bell, phrasing, to enter American federal courts. Now, the second comment you made was that jurisdiction, or focus on jurisdiction, is putting the court before the cause. And I was quite interested in what you actually meant by that, and whether you think it's still a discussion worth having. And if it is, and that's a question I think for the rest of the panelists, do you think that in European courts and in European member states the possibilities, jurisdictional possibilities to bring cases against, well, the parent companies, but also jointly or separately against the subsidiaries are sufficient, or whether we should still dive into the debate and maybe even put the court before the cause? Thank you. Yes, two questions I try to answer, both of them quite shortly. Well, it may be true that the doors were not completely closed by the U.S. Supreme Court, but certainly the possibility to take foreign events, foreign human rights violations before U.S. courts were severely limited by these decisions. It's quite clear, and the Daimler-Bauman case talked a lot about attribution in a group of companies, and the theory that the actions of one subsidiary of one affiliate company should be attributed to the parent was clearly rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. So that is one point. And the second point, when I said, when we talk only about jurisdiction, there is the danger of putting the court before the horse. What I meant is, if we understand jurisdiction narrowly, just in what it means to a civil procedure lawyer, we have first to think about the underlying substantive law and substantive rights, and we cannot analyze jurisdiction in and by itself. We have to talk about substantive rights, and that takes the question, what rights and whose rights and against whom. And in an international human rights context, that is extremely difficult when we talk about possible rights vis-à-vis private corporations. And some of the way I understand international human rights law, the exact contours of the obligations of private individuals with respect to the human rights of others are by no means clear. And without clarity on that level, it would be very difficult to take that matter up to court. That's what I meant by putting the court before the horse. Hi. Is this working? I can't tell. I'm Jonathan Kaufman. I'm the American lawyer. So I just did want to follow up on Lucas's point. I think that I hear points of what I understand a lot of you and both what the honorable judge has said and also what Lucas said. In terms of the openness of US courts to human rights claims. What's happened since Kiebel, what I can say, is that many claims involving foreign human rights abuses using the particular law that was targeted by Kiebel have been dismissed because of Kiebel. But there's also been a large number of cases that have been upheld, even though they took place abroad, because they had a sufficient connection to the United States. So what that actually did was to tighten that requirement and say it's not enough to just have a company that has some presence in the United States that claims themselves need to have some tighter nexus. So that might be that it's an American company. It might be that some decisions were made in the United States that involves the US government in some way. So certainly, the door is not closed, but it has been tightened, as the judge said. And as far as Bauman goes, the Bauman decision wasn't specifically about human rights claims at all, although it happened to have been a human rights case. It was about when can US courts get jurisdiction over foreign companies. Prior to that case, our jurisdictional laws were a lot looser in terms of what connection to the United States would subject a company to general jurisdiction in the US. And now it's a lot tighter. It's much closer to what you see in Brussels Convention. One thing I did want to mention is that in the Kiebel case, and I think in the Bauman case as well, several European governments submitted amicus briefs urging the US Supreme Court to tighten its jurisdiction and not, and to do what it ultimately did. So we had the UK, the Dutch, and the German governments all coming in and saying, we are concerned about this and we want you to whittle down the jurisdiction. So thanks for that, Europe. I had two questions. One was about the idea of the sectoral approach. I certainly see, I see that notion of kind of incremental and sectoral work making a lot of sense, and you certainly see a lot of progress in the corruption realm and the employment realm. What we see in the US is that industry lobbies and the US Chamber of Commerce recognize that a sectoral approach to expanding duties and regulation is essentially a creeping threat. And they strongly, strongly oppose any new regulations regardless of whether it's in a priority sector. And I'm wondering if it's similar in Europe because that certainly limits the success of a sectoral approach in the United States even though certainly there's an interest in a consciousness in that. And my other question is based on what the judge was mentioning about how the higher you go up in the corporate chain, the easier the defense is going to be because duties become a bit more diffuse and more high level oversight. We see that a number of voluntary initiatives, for example, the voluntary principles on security and human rights urge companies to take responsibility for human rights policy at the highest level of the corporate group. And so suddenly you now have corporate headquarters in Toronto or London is paying attention to and auditing the practices of all of their subsidiaries in the field in hiring security guards, for example. Do you think that that development will assist in establishing that duty of care at a higher level? Sure. I've got to say first, I don't own the sectoral approach but I'm going to respond to it. In that, sure, and as the rhythm gathers that it's going to be a sectoral approach, the particular wave of lobbyists line up and I can certainly see that. But I think firstly the culture, I have to make a comment about the lobbying culture here. I think the European Commission, although there are issues around lobbying and registration and that kind of thing, they don't have the food lobby and the sugar lobby right across from the White House in the same way. And if we look at is it going to be a sectoral approach as opposed to a generic one, then I think then we have a much higher chance in the sectoral than on generic. For instance, if we were trying to say generic duty of care, generic group actions, it's just not going to happen, especially in Europe. So that's one of the reasons. I'm just commenting on our observation. I just wanted to say that. Well, my response is short. Yes, that means yes, when you ask the question whether the development you just described might assist in changing things. When we talk about different rules are asked to corporate responsibility, attribution and so forth. And that also ties in nicely with this kind of self commitment I suggested because that's simply what's being done. And obviously if a company promises that this is our policy, it's a lot easier to enforce this indirectly in Europe by way of, well, if we talk about unfair trade practices, there are a lot of people in Europe having standing to bring these actions and they range from not only from competitors, which can be very effective, but may also involve public interest groups or the government actually. So there's a lot easier rather than flying people up to Austria from Nigeria and so forth. Thank you. Daniel Augenstein from Tilburg. Just two quick reactions to an attempt to put this all a bit in a broader context. The first one picks up on what Ingrid said about working in a firm that makes a lot of its money with competition law. And just to say that for competition lawyers, many of the problems we discussed here are not particularly relevant, right? They don't really have much patience for territorial jurisdictions or for the way corporate law desects economic entities into separate legal persons because otherwise you couldn't do what they're doing. It doesn't make sense to do M&As if you feel constrained in this way. And of course nothing follows directly from this for business and human rights, but I think it puts a bit things into perspective. So there's a counter-reaction already. And the second thing I wanted to say is that if, of course, I mean, we see increasingly that courts in Europe at least are overburdened understaffed and so on. And there are concerns here with sort of making sure, also human rights concerns, making sure you can still deliver justice and so on. At the same time, I think we have to recognize that many of these big corporations are incorporated in the European member states. And there's in the question whether we, there's no certain reciprocity or expectations that we also provide justice to the people who are actually affected by the operations given that a lot of the money flows back into our states and we have an interest in having these corporations here. So I'm going beyond purely strategic litigation to trying to sort of provide justice in a reciprocity sort of sense that we said that we, yes, we have these corporations that operate from our states, the human rights violations are committed elsewhere. So I think there's an argument to be made that we also have to offer access to justice for the victims. Thank you. A competition point, Daniel. Certainly I'm not thinking M&As, I'm thinking cartels. And I think the judge has been pretty involved on that scheme and most of the judiciary of the member states will be very up to speed on cartels. And the European Commission has been much exercised. What I'm suggesting is that there are certain procedures and certain aspects that can be adopted, I'm not talking willy nilly, but things like disclosure as the judges hinted may be expanded into this area. So, you know, there is possibility there. Then of course, there's the whistleblowing mechanism and whistleblowing in human rights, and especially in international human rights where in the instructive industries and others would be a fabulous thing if we could formalize whistleblowing and the retribution of victims, which is also available in competition law. There are so many things, little things and big things in the competition regime which may or may not be, you know, appropriate to look at. And I'm not saying everything is appropriate to adopt, but it's certainly something that seems to exist, be accepted.  And human rights abuse and failure of markets, there is a nexus and there is some relationship and that should probably be more explored. Yeah, many thanks to all the panelists for their hands-on experiences. I found it very, very interesting. One point struck me in particular, the point that Ingrid made about the categories of victims, that sort of the categorization that emerges through the judicial system. And you made some proposals on how to address that, burden of proof and so on. But looking beyond the judicial system, you mentioned self-commitment of companies, you just mentioned whistleblowing. Do you see also potential for non-judicial remedies to reach a wider group of victims? Yeah, definitely non-judicial internal grievance mechanisms. They're all great and they're all tools. My caveat on this is that it is the case that over the many years many of these have been tried and they are good, but they're limited when people don't know their legal rights as well. And then what happens is people struggle with these ADRs, they used to be called, or grievance mechanisms, they're now called, all of these things. And the people concerned who are harmed are unaware of their legal rights. So there's a failure to get preservation of rights in time. And the time is told, they're too late to go to court because they've been messing around with grievance mechanisms that haven't worked and companies have known this and have allowed it to happen and have encouraged it and encouraged, yes, let's talk, let's offer, let's talk, let's offer, and then the time passes and they've lost their rights. So my only concern is, and I know Jonathan will talk a lot more about this later, is that legal rights are preserved early in the piece that activists are aware that they must get legal advice early on because otherwise what we see is they come all too late. My question is very quick and it's related also to very much link to the question about the non-judicial remedies and to what Ingrid said about the lawyers being the tools in the process. Could the big involvement of the legal profession in the process be part of the solution? Both on the sectoral level, because not only as a law firm, but as a legal profession in general, because for example law firms could and should apply business and human rights principles to themselves as business entities, but they could and should advise their clients to get in trouble with business and human rights. So this could be, this could work also as a prevention of adverse impacts they might cause. And since I'm very much interested in the business and human rights application in the legal sector, I wanted to ask also you, how is the situation in Austria? Because I'm based here, I recently moved here, so I'm curious, thank you. Very quickly, you may well be aware of the work being done by the law societies everywhere, including the UK, where they have now promulgated guidance for particularly defense lawyers around business and human rights principles, that they themselves must follow due diligence, that they will now need to start thinking about advising more widely. And this is something I may be raised later by Keyes, is that talking with those people, general counsel within companies and the sustainability people and the tensions between them, and then trying to devise a way of looking at due diligence within the legal profession, because clearly that's a major factor. Thanks for the question. I can totally agree with Ingrid. I mean, lawyers would be so much valuable in all the process, honestly speaking, because what Ingrid first started with, you companies can't talk to victims or clients or customers or whatsoever, and they start talking and then you have this period of time that passes by and then you have a time bar of your legal rights and you have no possibility or chance to bring in either civil cases or criminal cases. But I do see very, very often dealing with civil cases as well as criminal cases at all with wide range environmental cases, civil procedure rules in Austria are very strict, like Georg Kodek already mentioned, especially representing huge groups of victims, first of all. So we have procedural issues there. We have time bar issues. We also have issues of attribution, of course, especially attribution to the parental, to the mother company, the grand mother company and so on. It's also, of course, an issue what Yvonne mentioned. It's so cost intensive. If you really want to stand civil trial or environmental trial or criminal trial, just the investigation proceedings, just to set the facts rates, will take at least a couple of years. If you go through all the procedural, appeal procedure, procedure to the Supreme Court and so on, it also a couple of years, you see that. So there are so many challenges in all sides and Austria is definitely going to improve in this sector regarding criminal liability of judicial persons. Thanks God we got that. Also, thanks God, we got a new corruption law codex. We did some major reforms regarding human rights issues in criminal law procedure, for example, legal experts, how you can respond to that. Can you actually hand in a file to not getting them involved anymore and along or if they already worked for the prosecution and so on. So we see recent developments. I think we will see definitely far more in the future. And it's a huge challenge, but it will be a way to find it. And I think that the law profession is crucial to that, definitely in this respect. Aline, you want to add? You're going to talk about the involvement of them. I follow what's happening with your law society and on raising awareness of the law firms because it seems like it's only big law firms are aware of the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights. But the law society is doing a lot to change the situation. So I was curious how the situation is in Austria and other countries because it's not that brilliant. And I think really the involvement of lawyers is crucial, as you said, because of many things and starting with the awareness of the victims of their legal rights and also the prevention mechanism. I would just like to add something from the criminal law perspective. Of course, I mean, the starting point is Article 13 of the Fundamental Rights, Human Rights Convention, meaning the right to have an effective remedy available to those who can arguably claim that their human rights have been violated. And as I said before, under the case law of the Schwarzburg Court, it is clear that when it comes to severe human rights violations, civil law is not sufficient, but it needs a deterrence that is offered by the criminal law. That's the view of the Court in Schwarzburg. I think this could, for instance, when it comes to labor exploitation, could be then used in proceedings to divert proceedings towards mediation. I understand that for the exploited workers, it's very much about being awarded the remuneration that's due to them, to have back pay made to them. But this will only work once the criminal proceedings are in general more effective than they are today, as long as employers don't have to fear criminal proceedings, much less having to pay back pay to the victims within these criminal proceedings. This diversion means like mediation and all these out of court settlements, which could be very helpful and much in the interest of workers won't work as long as there's not an effective threat to the employers that if they don't engage in mediation, then they would face criminal proceedings. As long as that's not the case, I think this will not become effective. As concerns international jurisdiction, I think in member states, definitely in the one member states, that's Austria, that is simply piecemeal. It's quite striking in one case in Austria, there is international jurisdiction. If the crime committed benefits a legal person that is situated in Austria and that is terrorism, that's it's not trafficking, it's not I don't know what money laundering is terrorism, simply because that's been very high on the agenda. So what we find in very lengthy paragraphs is really piecemeal. I do think that this should be a topic for discussion because overall the human rights are developing for something that was believed to be well taken care of by national states and definitely by democratic states. And since the 1970s, the view on human rights has been much more critical about states and much more about also regional and international courts and other institutions coming into actually supervise and control what states are doing. So I think the basic approach should be that there's more competence for authorities to take care of human rights violations with a global perspective and less to rely that all nation states are well capable of dealing with human rights. The approach taken by the court in Stastak when it comes to the question of whether national remedies are effective has always been that it's not about the legal situation, not about the laws, it is about whether a victim of human rights violation can really expect a certain means, a certain remedy to be effective or not and then the court is quite strict in saying actually that's never worked. So I think the same should apply in the human rights context when it comes to the question whether something can be relied on that another state would deal with it or whether actually a member's national authority should engage in protecting that right. Any additional questions? Otherwise we still have four minutes. So I have the pleasure, first of all to thank all the panelists and then maybe ask for some really short, short closing remarks from all of you once again. I've indeed that already. Maybe going to Ingrid. Ingrid, any last words from you? Thank you for raising the point on whistleblowing. It's something totally new in Austria. We started it two years ago, the anti-corruption agency of the prosecutor who actually deals with specific white color crimes. They started a hotline and within the first 10 months they got 1,244 complaints and everyone was shocked and totally surprised and everything. So it's totally neat to us but we actually heavily engage it. So some closing remarks, Ingrid? Well, thanks for sitting there and listening to me. Very nice of you. And I wanted to say, I think the judges made some interesting indications which could be useful to follow up and you should talk more to him. And also, I think when it comes to whistleblowing and international human rights, you probably won't get 1,000 on that because of course accessing help lines and so on. Surprisingly, most people even in a village where there's no electricity will have a cell phone but no internet access and you can ring them direct from London funnily enough no matter how remote, quite often, because they have a cell phone. So there are definite communication possibilities and I would like to bring those people closer to us somehow because they're like us in every other way, except they really are exactly like us in every other way in conversations, in aspirations, in every other way. Yet they're the ones still contracting malaria on the river's edge, drinking poisoned water from contaminants from mines which are owned by European mine owners. And so they have to have their lives intervened with all of these things and they have a right to life and a right to health and we need to be there. Definitely. Yvonne? Yes, thank you very much, Ingrid. I agree completely with that and thank you very much, everyone for listening. Thank you. Yvonne? Well, I think I've said enough, just one brief observation which also ties in this morning's session with the afternoon. The importance of legal advice has been mentioned and the importance of early legal advice and I think quite rightly so. And but not only for reasons of time, you thought that you talked about the danger of time lapse, prescription periods and so forth. But apart from that, I think if the rights that the people have are well contoured, there is not much, there are uncertainty involved, then that will be very beneficial for out-of-court negotiations because then we are not talking about humble petitioners asking for a favor from a company but we are talking about people enforcing, trying to enforce and claiming their rights and that's a huge difference. Thank you. So then it's, then thanks so much, thanks really to each of the speakers. Thank you so much for sharing, for giving your experience, for sharing your thoughts. It's such a pleasure to be on this panel and I really want to ask for a big applause for all of the speakers. Thank you so much.