The global reach of the EU law on responsible business conduct

Despite recent setbacks through the 2026 Omnibus Directive, the EU law on responsible business conduct continues to play an important role in the internal market law aimed at sustainability, human rights and the green transition. The respective legal instruments have not only drawn criticism from business associations and proponents of competitive markets, but were also questioned in light of their impact on production countries in the Global South and their peoples. Much of the latter criticism referred to concepts such as the extraterritorial or ‘Brussels’ effect of these instruments. The paper will assess these claims and argue that they do not fully capture the specific argument of the critique. Instead, the paper proposes the concept of a territorial extension as developed by Joanne Scott and scrutinizes the legitimacy of the EU law on responsible business conduct on the basis of its underlying values, possible effects and inclusiveness of the law-making process. The paper also contrasts the EU’s internal market law approach towards responsible business conduct with its approach in bilateral and multilateral treaty-making.

Markus Krajewski is professor of public international law at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He is Co-Spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Transforming Human Rights’, a collaborative research network which analyses the transformation of human rights in light of societal megatrends. His area of expertise includes business and human rights, EU external relations and international economic law.

Marija Jovanovic is a human rights lawyer with a research interest in modern slavery and human trafficking, business and human rights, labour rights, migration and refugee law, and regional human rights regimes. She holds DPhil, MPhil, and Magister Juris degrees from the University of Oxford, and a law degree from Serbia.

Marija is currently a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, and a Co-Investigator on behalf of the Bonavero Institute to the AHRC-funded Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre. She also holds a Senior Lectureship at the Essex Law School. She previously held a Research Fellowship at the Centre for International Law, the National University of Singapore, and a Lectureship in Law in Serbia.

She is the author of State Responsibility for ‘Modern Slavery’ in Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2023) and her recent work has focused on the compatibility of the UK’s immigration legislation with its human rights obligations towards victims of modern slavery, the experiences of modern slavery survivors in the UK prisons, and the issue of child criminal exploitation in the UK. Marija is currently working on the programme of research that focuses on labour exploitation including the ways in which states approach this issue both domestically and through supply chain regulation.  

Marija’s academic work seeks to contribute to both theory and practice of human rights law and is policy-oriented and impact-driven. Her legal consulting roles include collaborations with prominent international and civil society organisations in the human rights field.