This piece aims to assess the potential contribution and the scope and structure of a Catalan Centre for Business and Human Rights to supervise the fulfilment of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and to hold businesses operating in Catalonia accountable for human rights abuses within the autonomous community and abroad. It also examines how this proposal fits into the regional and national regulatory landscape for mandatory human rights due diligence.

August 16th, 2022 marked the 10th anniversary of the Marikana Massacre in Rustenburg, South Africa. This was the worst incident of mass killing by police since the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 in the heyday of the Apartheid regime. In the first days of August 2012, workers at Lonmin plc, a platinum group metals mining company, went on a wildcat strike demanding a minimum salary of 12500 Rand, circa 800 USD, per month and protesting against the poor living conditions they and their families where subjected to in the Marikana vicinity, an area 100 km north of Johannesburg where the mine is located. As days passed, tension escalated leading to the killing of ten people, including three non-striking workers, two security guards, three striking workers, and two police officers. Various attempts to facilitate negotiations with striking workers were turned down by Lonmin management. Instead, Lonmin managers actively engaged in communications with senior political leaders, police officers, and state mining officials to frame the situation as one that required strong and decisive police intervention.1

Third pillar – European Arrest Warrant – Nature of third pillar – Litigation before national constitutional courts – Primacy of EU law over national law – Differing national attitudes with regard to the status of third pillar law – Process of approximation: first pillar and third pillar – Achieving consistency through primacy of third pillar – Judicial protection of position of individual – Lisbon Treaty and the unification of EU law

Institutional shortcomings of the Third Pillar: efficiency, effectiveness, complexity, legitimacy – Genesis of the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon – Communitarisation of the Third Pillar – Some special institutional arrangements – Quid pro quos: stricter delimitation of the Union competencies and extension of the ‘opt out/opt in’ regimes – (New) foundations for Europol, Eurojust and the European Union Prosecutor's Office

Listening carefully, one might have heard the sigh of relief breathed in Brussels and other EU capitals on 3 May 2007, when the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ or Court) eventually delivered its first judgment on the European arrest warrant (EAW), giving the green light to this flagship instrument of EU judicial co-operation in criminal matters. However, what came as a relief for executive-branch officials, quite likely disappointed some of Europe's judges and legislators, as well as many academics and independent observers. For them, it must have seemed as if a long, tension-filled story had come to a bitter end.

Constitutional issues arising from the ruling in the Pupino case – Court of Justice holds that the duty of consistent interpretation applies also in relation to framework decisions – Analysis of the extent to which the doctrine of consistent interpretation can (and should) be transposed to the area of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters – Consequences for possible extension of other constitutional doctrines elaborated in the context of the first pillar to the third pillar – Extent to which third pillar acts can become a vehicle for the enforceability of fundamental rights as general principles of Union law – The possibility of invoking Francovich damages for breaches of Union law – To what extent can the Pupino reasoning be extended to the second pillar?

The European Union has been tightening its grip on the criminal laws of the member states. Article 31 of the Treaty on European Union introduced the framework decision as the appropriate instrument to harmonize criminal law. In this way, member states may be required to adopt minimum levels of criminal definitions and sanctions. This is a matter of ‘third pillar’ law. The case under scrutiny, however, is a perfect illustration of the delicate relationship between EU first pillar law and domestic criminal law.

Features European Arrest Warrant – Article 16(2) German Basic Law, which allows exceptionally for the extradition of German nationals, not read in the light of the European Union integration clause in Article 23(1) Basic Law – Complaint of violation of the democratic principle put in perspective – Preservation of the statehood of Germany – Lack of proportionality in and procedural defects of the implementing Act

The judgment of the European Court of Justice of 13 September 2005 decided an important institutional conflict in the Union. At the request of the Commission, the Court annulled the Council’s Framework Decision 2003/80/JHA on the protection of the environment through criminal law. In so doing, the Court acknowledged that the member states can be obliged under Community law and its system of conditions to impose criminal sanctions if this is necessary to protect Community law. It is beyond doubt that they thus can be obliged under Union law and its conditions. The underlying questions are about the relationship between the first and third pillars and the logic of each.