Global value chains

► Full reference: L. Knöpfel, « Une perspective anthropologique sur les pratiques de responsabilité des entreprises dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales » (An Anthropological Perspective on Corporate Responsibility Practices in Global Value Chains), Revue internationale de droit économique, 2021/4, vol. XXXV, pp. 45-67. - ► Summary: the author adopts a legal anthropology perspective on the governance of mining companies in global value chains, taking the reader into the relationships between a primary-sector company and local communities at the “resource frontier” in El Cesar, northern Colombia. After a methodological intervention on research into responsibility in value chains, she studies a particular corporate responsibility practice, social programmes, through corporate gifts and the social licence to operate, relations of dependence and detachment between the company and the communities, and the compensatory function of these programmes. She argues that social programmes sustain a cycle of reciprocity through which the company forges close and entangled relationships with the communities and assumes far-reaching responsibilities for their economic and social well-being. This understanding finds a legal counterpart in contractual obligations and third-party beneficiary rights: contract law could and should therefore play a central role in regulating global value chains, in the primary sector and beyond. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.

► Full reference: V. Ulfbeck and O. Hansen, « Des clauses de durabilité dans un droit des contrats non durable ? » (Sustainability Clauses in an Unsustainable Contract Law?), Revue internationale de droit économique, 2021/4, vol. XXXV, pp. 69-90; French translation of the article first published as “Sustainability Clauses in an Unsustainable Contract Law?”, European Review of Contract Law, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, pp. 186-205. - ► Summary: the authors start from the observation that companies in global value chains, often led by a firm with strong market power, insert sustainability clauses into their contracts, or refer to their codes of conduct, imposing on the supplier requirements relating to the environment, working conditions, human rights and anti-corruption, and often obliging it to pass them on to its own suppliers. They examine the view that general contract law, that is, default rules, should develop to serve this sustainability agenda, through three areas: principles of interpretation, express terms and the notion of third-party beneficiary. They then highlight the internal tension created in the chain by the pursuit of sustainability goals external to the parties’ interests, set against the need to protect the supplier as the weaker party: the incalculable nature of sustainability obligations and unilateral variation rights are two examples. Finally, they seek to reconcile these conflicting goals within a contract law that is itself sustainable. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.

► Full reference: A. Beckers, « L’image juridique évolutive des chaînes de valeur mondiales. Introduction au numéro spécial » (The Evolving Legal Image of Global Value Chains. Introduction to the Special Issue), Revue internationale de droit économique, 2021/4, vol. XXXV, pp. 5-18. - ► Summary: the author, introducing a special issue she edited with Hans-W. Micklitz, observes that global value chains have become a subject of legal research, driven by the national and European legislation targeting them and by case law increasingly concerned with the allocation of responsibility within global supply chains, yet they remain conceptually obscure. She identifies two causes: the fragmentation of the debate between branches of law – company, contract and tort law on the one hand, trade law and import regulation on the other – and the neglect of the private regulatory structures and power imbalances specific to these chains, which the social sciences have long studied. After reviewing how each of these branches of law approaches value chains, she argues that doctrinal legal analysis should be more closely linked to the study of the private practices and governance mechanisms that constitute them. She then presents the contributions to the issue, which address the question from the perspectives of the company, the contract, tort and trade, together with Kampourakis’s contribution on private regulation within value chains. - 🦉 The article is available in full text to those registered in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.