Perspectives of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction for Environmental Damage in the Proposal of the European Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence

The Proposal of the Directive regarding the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence provides new judicial protection for environmental damages and climate litigation caused by corporations, even in an extraterritorial context, considering the Directive’s scope of application. This prompts a discussion about the exercise of an extraterritorial jurisdiction by Member States’ courts. At European Union level, the titles of jurisdiction, identified in the Brussels I Recast Regulation, allow foreign victims to proceed before the court of a Member State, but only if the parent company is established in that specific Member State. Otherwise, these criteria are generally considered inadequate and insufficient. The proposed Directive seems to be a new opportunity to reform the European private international law, aligning it with the right to access to justice, as provided by Article 10 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.