🍻 Selber Bier Brauen

Editor’s Pick

by EVA MARIA BREDLER

There is a poem I keep on my wall, directly above my desk. It has carried me through times of transition, bold decisions, studious nights, and moments of lonely stagnation. Every time I read it, it still gives me goosebumps. Isn’t that pure magic? Rilke wrote these lines on 4th October 1899 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, and today, in 2026, they reach across time and space to touch me here in Barcelona. I’m curious what they will do to you. I’m afraid that magic might get lost in translation, so if you do speak some German, I invite you to read the original. If not, here’s a translation by Joanna Mercy:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

*

The Week on Verfassungsblog

summarised by EVA MARIA BREDLER

There are many stages for the state to stage itself. Parliaments, too, dance to the music of political (dis)harmonies. We saw a particularly vivid example recently in the European Parliament, with the passing of the so-called Return Regulation – as DANA SCHMALZ already analysed last week. Her piece is now available in English, too.

The Swedish Parliament, too, is rehearsing a bold piece. A new proposal aims to strip dual citizens of their nationality when they have committed offences in connection with organised crime and gang criminality that “seriously threaten Sweden’s vital interests”. ESTER HERLIN-KARNELL (ENG) shows how the legal standard of “vital interests” is prone to misuse.

Germany has just had its own depressing premiere of a piece on the revocation of citizenship. And another piece keeps running: internal border controls – meant as exceptional, time-limited measures – have proliferated since 2015, with refugees pushed back at borders once meant to be open. Schengen is dying by a thousand cuts – and the Commission may just have helped along the way, with its long-awaited opinion on the necessity and proportionality of German border controls. LEON ZÜLLIG and STEFAN SALOMON (ENG) explain why it beats around the bush, and reveal a troubling vision for Schengen’s future.

If the Commission won’t help, perhaps German courts will. The Bavarian Higher Administrative Court and the Koblenz Administrative Court have just ruled in favour of plaintiffs challenging internal border controls – including, of all people, a law professor on his way home from the official celebration of forty years of Schengen (you can’t make that up). The federal government invoked overburdened immigration offices; the courts were unconvinced. LEON ZÜLLIG (GER) analyses the rulings (feat. Britney Spears).

While public administration claims to crumble under migration-induced burdens, new technologies arrive right on cue. In recent years, both the European Union and its Member States have come to rely heavily on advanced technologies, including AI, to support border control, migration management and asylum administration. One prominent example is the Dialect Identification Assistance System, used by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in asylum proceedings. JULIANE BECK (ENG) shows why that system is not a neutral, objective tool but poses risks to individual rights protection – and carries a clear danger of institutional concealment.

Advanced technologies are themselves vulnerable to threats. Geopolitical threats to data protection, in particular, can arise from armed conflicts and cyberattacks. The processing of personal data needed to deliver vital services may be disrupted, public records and databases may be destroyed, and data may be misused to enable human rights abuses. CHRISTOPHER KUNER (ENG) observes that EU law is currently unprepared, and calls for action from the EU institutions and the data protection authorities.

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While the focus today is very much on digital technologies, we should not lose sight of technologies that are tangibly changing the way we live. The EU, for instance, has just deregulated new genomic techniques in the area of genetically modified organisms –  the most radical change in EU GMO regulation in three decades. Yet ALEXANDRA MOLITORISOVÁ and ALEKSANDRA HUBAR-KOŁODZIEJCZYK (ENG) argue that the change was inevitable.

Change seemed inevitable in the United Kingdom, too: Keir Starmer resigned two years after Labour’s landslide victory – before completing a single term. GIOVANNI CAPOCCIA (ENG) argues that his fall says more about the predicaments of liberal democracy than about Labour’s failures.

The predicaments of liberal democracy have prompted PUBLIC LAW SCHOLARS (ENG) to interject in Hungary’s current play of constitutional transition. In an open letter to the Hungarian Parliament, they support replacing high-ranking public office-holders who have remained in post from the previous autocratic regime, while urging Parliament to show self-restraint when electing their successors.

New public office-holders were also elected in the small German town of Aue-Bad Schlema – though by the narrowest of margins. The CDU candidate Marcus Hoffmann edged out Stefan Hartung, the candidate of the far-right party “Freie Sachsen”, to become mayor. The election raises fundamental questions about the limits of eligibility for elected local officials. ANDREAS NITSCHKE(GER) examines how German law responds to candidates from anti-constitutional parties.

Anti-constitutional parties, in turn, respond to the law. Time and again, the AfD tries to put pressure on educational institutions by accusing them of insufficient neutrality – most recently at TU Berlin. The case fits the broader pattern of authoritarian threats to academic freedom, argues MAX LENZ (GER).

The AfD finds another stage in the civil service. For now, civil servants’ constitutional duty of loyalty still stands in the way – as it did in the recent ruling from the Berlin Administrative Court, which upheld the refusal to appoint an AfD local politician to the police force. From AfD members seeking civil service appointments, the courts demand both complete passivity and active distancing from the party’s aims – Schrödinger’s loyalty test? This case law is paradoxical, argues SOFIANE BENAMOR (ENG).

Paradoxical, too, is the way criminal law handles femicides: although the murder provision already covers them, courts have for decades failed to consistently recognise patriarchal motives as such. For ALINA GORSTEIN and SASCHA SEBASTIAN (GER), this imbalance bears on the state’s duty to protect women – and puts the legislator under obligation.

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One subject has grown over the past few weeks into a small symposium of its own: reviving the European Defence Community. After Robert Schütze’s critique, FEDERICO FABBRINI, NIELS KIRST and FRANZ C. MAYER (ENG) clarify their position.

We have continued our symposium “Inter-Judicial Dialogue on Climate Change and Human Rights” (ENG). MARIA ANTONIA TIGRE traces the arc of more than two decades of jurisprudential construction, culminating in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights. LILIANA ÁVILA reads Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 as a transformative moment for organisations that have spent years fighting for communities on the front lines of the climate emergency. ANNA LUMERDING and MELANIE MAURER take the landmark KlimaSeniorinnen ruling as a starting point to examine the role of procedural rights in climate litigation before the European Court of Human Rights.

We have also launched a new symposium: “European Society After Commission v Hungary” (ENG). The landmark Commission v Hungary judgment has opened a new chapter in EU law: the CJEU not only held that Article 2 TEU can be invoked as a self-standing provision in infringement proceedings, but also acknowledged the existence of a European society in which certain values prevail – a historic first. In this symposium, we set out to show the diverse ways in which scholars from law, philosophy and the social sciences reflect on European society, in and beyond Commission v Hungary. In their introductory post, SILVIA STEININGER and JASPER SIEGERT take a genealogical approach to the emergence of European society as a research interest, and lay out its implications and challenges. ARMIN VON BOGDANDY argues that the Court is likely referring to a European society – and sketches four foundational understandings of that newly introduced (legal) concept. FRANK SCHORKOPF warns that this could turn jurisprudence into a political act, severing law from social reality. JACOB VAN DE BEETEN argues that, on closer inspection, there is little that is genuinely transformative in either the Article 2 TEU case law or its invocation of European society. The Italian Constitutional Court has just acknowledged European society for the very first time, in a case concerning citizenship for descendants of Italians abroad. For CHIARA GENTILE, the significance of that development lies in a fundamental question: who belongs to European society? PIOTR ZAŁĘSKI writes that pluralism, taken seriously, means that Article 2 TEU cannot become a mandate for one vision of the good society. OLIVER GERSTENBERG argues that it functions as a normative organising concept, guiding courts toward “reflective equilibrium” rather than top-down judicial imposition. Through a Habermasian lens, FRANCA MARIA FEISELshows that the Court’s appeal to European society as a source of authority is difficult to reconcile with democratic legitimacy.

If, in this heat, your thinking thickens – fair enough. Save Habermas for another time, and go and stare at a real stage up close instead, in the air-conditioned dark.

*

That’s it for this week. Take care and all the best!

Yours,

the Verfassungsblog Team

If you would like to receive the weekly editorial as an e-mail, you can subscribe here.

The post Stammheim to Stammheim appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

Editor’s Pick

von EVA MARIA BREDLER

Bei mir hängt ein Gedicht an der Wand, direkt über dem Schreibtisch. Es hat mich durch Zeiten des Umbruchs getragen, durch mutige Entscheidungen, durch arbeitsame Nächte und einsame Antriebslosigkeit. Wenn ich es lese, stellen sich mir jedes Mal wieder die Haare auf. Ist das nicht magisch? Rilke schrieb diese Wörter am 4. Oktober 1899 in Berlin-Schmargendorf auf, und durch Zeit und Raum hindurch verpassen sie mir 2026 in Barcelona eine Gänsehaut. Ich bin gespannt, was die Zeilen mit Ihnen machen. Hier sind sie:

Gott spricht zu jedem nur, eh er ihn macht, 
dann geht er schweigend mit ihm aus der Nacht. 
Aber die Worte, eh jeder beginnt, 
diese wolkigen Worte, sind: 

Von deinen Sinnen hinausgesandt, 
geh bis an deiner Sehnsucht Rand; 
gieb mir Gewand. 
Hinter den Dingen wachse als Brand, 
dass ihre Schatten, ausgespannt, 
immer mich ganz bedecken. 

Lass dir Alles geschehn: Schönheit und Schrecken. 
Man muss nur gehn: Kein Gefühl ist das fernste. 
Lass dich von mir nicht trennen. 
Nah ist das Land, 
das sie das Leben nennen. 

Du wirst es erkennen 
an seinem Ernste. 

Gieb mir die Hand.

*

Die Woche auf dem Verfassungsblog

zusammengefasst von EVA MARIA BREDLER

Es gibt viele Bühnen staatlicher Selbstvergewisserung. Auch in Parlamenten wird zur Musik politischer (Ver)stimmungen getanzt. Besonders eindrücklich konnten wir das im Europäischen Parlament bei der Verabschiedung der sogenannten Rückführungsrichtlinie beobachten, wie DANA SCHMALZ bereits letzte Woche analysiert hat – der Text ist jetzt auch auf Englisch verfügbar.

Auch das schwedische Parlament probt ein starkes Stück. Ein neuer Gesetzesvorschlag will Staatsangehörigen mit doppelter Staatsbürgerschaft die schwedische entziehen, wenn sie Straftaten im Zusammenhang mit organisierter Kriminalität und Bandenkriminalität begehen, die „die vitalen Interessen Schwedens ernsthaft bedrohen“. ESTER HERLIN-KARNELL (EN) zeigt, wie missbrauchsanfällig der Rechtsbegriff der „vitalen Interessen“ ist.

Deutschland erlebte gerade seine eigene bedrückende Premiere – ein Stück zur Aberkennung der Staatsangehörigkeit. Und ein anderes Stück läuft weiter: Binnengrenzkontrollen –  eigentlich als zeitlich befristete Ausnahmemaßnahmen gedacht – haben sich seit 2015 vervielfacht; Geflüchtete werden an Grenzen zurückgewiesen, die einst offen sein sollten. Schengen stirbt damit langsam den Tod durch tausend Stiche – und die Kommission hat dabei möglicherweise nachgeholfen, mit ihrer lang erwarteten Stellungnahme zu den deutschen Binnengrenzkontrollen. LEON ZÜLLIG und STEFAN SALOMON (EN) erklären, wie die Kommission um den heißen Brei herumredet – und welche düstere Zukunftsvision für Schengen sie herbeiredet.

Während die Kommission nicht hilft, springen die deutschen Gerichte ein. Der Bayerische Verwaltungsgerichtshof und das Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz gaben nun Kläger:innen Recht, die gegen Binnengrenzkontrollen vorgegangen waren – darunter ausgerechnet ein Juraprofessor auf dem Rückweg vom Festakt zu 40 Jahren Schengen (kann man sich nicht besser ausdenken). Die Bundesregierung berief sich auf überlastete Ausländerbehörden, doch das hat die Gerichte nicht überzeugt. LEON ZÜLLIG (DE) analysiert die Urteile (feat. Britney Spears).

Bei all der vermeintlich migrationsbedingten Überlastung kommen neue Technologien wie gerufen. In den letzten Jahren setzen die Europäische Union und ihre Mitgliedstaaten zunehmend auf neue Technologien – vor allem KI –, um Grenzkontrolle, Migrationssteuerung und Asylverwaltung zu unterstützen. Ein prominentes Beispiel ist das Dialect Identification Assistance System, das das Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge in Asylverfahren einsetzt. JULIANE BECK (EN) zeigt, wie dieses System individuelle Rechte bedroht – unter institutioneller Verschleierung.

Doch Technologien sind selbst angreifbar – erst recht geopolitisch: Bewaffnete Konflikte und Cyberangriffe stören die Verarbeitung lebenswichtiger personenbezogener Daten, zerstören öffentliche Register und Datenbanken und instrumentalisieren persönliche Informationen für Menschenrechtsverletzungen. CHRISTOPHER KUNER (EN) stellt fest, dass das EU-Recht darauf bislang unvorbereitet ist, und fordert die EU-Institutionen und die Datenschutzbehörden zum Handeln auf.

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Darüber sollten wir Technologien nicht aus dem Blick verlieren, die sich ganz analog auf unseren Körper auswirken. So hat die EU gerade die neuen genomischen Techniken im Bereich gentechnisch veränderter Organismen dereguliert – die radikalste Änderung der EU-GMO-Regulierung seit drei Jahrzehnten. ALEXANDRA MOLITORISOVÁ und ALEKSANDRA HUBAR-KOŁODZIEJCZYK (EN) meinen dennoch: Die Reform war unvermeidlich.

Unvermeidlich schien auch eine Reform im Vereinigten Königreich: Keir Starmer trat zwei Jahre nach Labours Erdrutschsieg zurück – noch vor Ablauf der ersten Amtszeit. Für GIOVANNI CAPOCCIA (EN) sagt sein Fall mehr über die Nöte der liberalen Demokratie als über das Versagen Labours.

Eben diese Nöte der liberalen Demokratie haben PUBLIC LAW SCHOLARS (EN) dazu bewegt, ein laufendes ungarisches Verfassungsstück mit Zwischenrufen zu unterbrechen. In ihrem offenen Brief an das ungarische Parlament befürworten sie die Entlassung hochrangiger Amtsträger:innen, die noch aus Orbáns Regime im Amt geblieben sind – und plädieren zugleich dafür, dass sich das Parlament bei der Wahl ihrer Nachfolger:innen zurückhält.

Auch in der sächsischen Kleinstadt Aue-Bad Schlema wurden neue öffentliche Amtsträger gewählt. Nur mit knapper Mehrheit konnte sich dabei der CDU-Kandidat Marcus Hoffmann gegen den Kandidaten der rechtsextremen Partei „Freie Sachsen“, Stefan Hartung, als Oberbürgermeister durchsetzen. Die Wahl wirft grundlegende Fragen nach den Grenzen der Wählbarkeit kommunaler Wahlbeamte auf. ANDREAS NITSCHKE (DE) untersucht, wie das Recht auf Kandidat:innen verfassungsfeindlicher Parteien reagiert.

Umgekehrt reagieren verfassungsfeindliche Parteien auch auf das Recht. Immer wieder versucht die AfD, wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen unter Druck zu setzen, indem sie ihnen fehlende Neutralität vorwirft – zuletzt an der TU in Berlin. Dieser Fall fügt sich in das Bild autoritärer Bedrohungen der Wissenschaft ein, meint MAX LENZ (DE).

Eine andere Bühne findet die AfD im Beamtentum. Momentan steht dabei noch die beamtenrechtliche Verfassungstreuepflicht im Weg – so auch im jüngsten Fall vor dem VG Berlin, das die Nichteinstellung eines AfD-Kommunalpolitikers in den Polizeidienst billigte. Vor Verbeamtungen von AfD-Mitgliedern verlangen die Gerichte zum einen völlige Passivität und zugleich aktive Distanzierung von den Zielen der Partei – Schrödingers Verfassungstreueprüfung? SOFIANE BENAMOR (DE) hält diese Rechtsprechung für paradox.

Paradox ist auch der strafrechtliche Umgang mit Femiziden: Obwohl der Mordtatbestand Femizide erfasst, gelingt es Gerichten seit Jahrzehnten nicht, patriarchale Tatmotive konsequent als solche zu erkennen. Für ALINA GORSTEIN und SASCHA SEBASTIAN(DE) berührt diese Schieflage den staatlichen Schutzauftrag gegenüber Frauen und nimmt den Gesetzgeber in die Pflicht.

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Ein anderes Thema ist bei uns in den letzten Wochen zu einem Mini-Symposium (EN) angewachsen: die Wiederbelebung der Europäischen Verteidigungsgemeinschaft. Nach Robert Schützes Kritik präzisieren FEDERICO FABBRINI, NIELS KIRST und FRANZ C. MAYER (EN) ihre Position.

Diese Woche haben wir außerdem unser Symposium „Inter-Judicial Dialogue on Climate Change and Human Rights” (EN) fortgesetzt. MARIA ANTONIA TIGRE schlägt den Bogen von mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten rechtsprechender Konstruktion hin zur Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 des Interamerikanischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte zu Klimakrise und Menschenrechten. LILIANA ÁVILA liest die Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 als Wendepunkt für Organisationen, die sich seit Jahren für Gemeinschaften an vorderster Front der Klimakrise einsetzen. ANNA LUMERDING und MELANIE MAURER nehmen das wegweisende KlimaSeniorinnen-Urteil zum Ausgangspunkt, um die Rolle prozeduraler Rechte in Klimaverfahren vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte zu untersuchen.

Außerdem haben wir ein neues Symposium gestartet: „European Society After Commission v Hungary” (EN). Denn in Commission v Hungary hat der EuGH nicht nur entschieden, dass Art. 2 EUV als eigenständige Vorschrift im Vertragsverletzungsverfahren herangezogen werden kann, sondern auch eine europäische Gesellschaft beschrieben, in der bestimmte Werte vorherrschen. In diesem Symposium wollen wir die Vielfalt sichtbar machen, mit der Wissenschaftler:innen aus Recht, Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften über die europäische Gesellschaft nachdenken – in und über Commission v Hungary hinaus. In ihrer Einleitung erklären SILVIA STEININGER und JASPER SIEGERT ihren genealogischen Zugang zum Thema und dessen Implikationen. ARMIN VON BOGDANDY argumentiert, dass der Gerichtshof tatsächlich von einer europäischen Gesellschaft sprechen dürfte – und skizziert vier grundlegende Verständnisse dieses neu eingeführten (Rechts-)Begriffs. FRANK SCHORKOPFwarnt davor, dass damit die Rechtsprechung zu einem politischen Akt werden könnte, der das Recht von der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit trennt. JACOB VAN DE BEETEN kann weder in der Art.-2-EUV-Rechtsprechung noch in der Berufung auf die europäische Gesellschaft etwas wirklich Transformatives erkennen. Der italienische Verfassungsgerichtshof hat die europäische Gesellschaft jüngst zum ersten Mal anerkannt – in einem Fall zur Staatsbürgerschaft für Nachfahren italienischer Auswanderer. Für CHIARA GENTILE wirft dies eine grundlegende Frage auf: Wer gehört zur europäischen Gesellschaft? Für PIOTR ZAŁĘSKIbedeutet Pluralismus – wenn man ihn ernst nimmt –, dass Art. 2 EUV kein Mandat für eine bestimmte Vision der guten Gesellschaft werden kann. OLIVER GERSTENBERG sieht in der europäischen Gesellschaft ein normatives Ordnungskonzept, das Gerichte zu einem „reflective equilibrium“ anleitet, statt richterliche Vorgaben von oben durchzusetzen. Mit Habermas benennt FRANCA MARIA FEISEL die demokratischen Legitimitätsprobleme, die entstehen, wenn sich der Gerichtshof auf die europäische Gesellschaft beruft.

Wenn Ihnen das Blut im Hirn bei der Hitze dickflüssig geworden ist – fair enough. Heben Sie sich Habermas für später auf und starren Sie stattdessen einfach eine echte Bühne aus der Nähe an, im klimatisierten Dunkel.

*

Das war’s für diese Woche.

The post Stammheim nach Stammheim appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

On 25 June 2026, the Paris Judicial Court became the first court to rule on the merits of Notre Affaire à Tous and others v. TotalEnergies SE – six years after the case was filed and three procedural rulings deep. At its core, the case concerns whether TotalEnergies violated the French Commercial Code by failing to adequately report the climate risks associated with its activities and take action to mitigate those risks in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The decision does not order TotalEnergies to stop drilling, adopt the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions pathway, or reduce its hydrocarbon production by any particular percentage. Instead, the court settled the statutory foundations of corporate climate due diligence under French law, extended those foundations to Scope 3 emissions, and set in motion a structured second round in which the real substantive contest will be fought. The ruling is less a final answer than an architecture – and understanding that architecture matters well beyond France.

Three Holdings That Change the Landscape

The loi de vigilance of 27 March 2017 (Law No. 2017-399) requires companies above certain size thresholds to draw up, publish, and effectively implement a vigilance plan containing reasonable due diligence measures to prevent serious infringements of human rights, individual health and safety, and the environment arising from their activities and those of their subsidiaries, subcontractors, and suppliers. TotalEnergies had argued, consistently and at every procedural stage, that climate change is a global, multi-factorial phenomenon that does not “result from” its activities within the meaning of the statute, and that in any event Scope 3 emissions – those arising from customers’ combustion of the fuels it produces – are beyond its control and outside the law’s scope.

The court rejected both arguments, and in doing so made three holdings of lasting significance.

First, it held that “environment” in Article L.225-102-1 of the Code de commerce must be interpreted in its broadest sense, encompassing climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The court anchored this reading in the statute’s legislative history – which explicitly invoked COP21 and the Paris Agreement – and in the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which expressly include climate change among the negative environmental impacts that trigger due diligence obligations. The Omnibus Directive’s ongoing rollback of the CS3D’s climate transition plan requirement does not disturb this conclusion: that instrument operates at the European reporting and due diligence level, while the 2017 statute implements the underlying OECD framework as a matter of French law (§ 146). In doing so, the court has insulated the loi de vigilance from regulatory backsliding at the EU level.

Second, it held that Scope 3 emissions result from TotalEnergies’ activities within the meaning of the statute. The causal reasoning is direct: oil and gas extracted and placed on the market will, inevitably and regardless of where and when, be combusted. The emissions from that combustion are therefore not the autonomous act of a third party but the foreseeable and quantifiable consequence of the upstream production decision. The court drew on converging foreign authority – the UK Supreme Court in R (Finch) v Surrey County Council [2024] UKSC 20, the Hague Court of Appeal in Shell (12 November 2024), and the European Court of Human Rights in Greenpeace Nordic v. Norway (28 October 2025) – each of which had recognized the same strong causal link between extraction and combustion. The finding that Scope 3 belongs inside the vigilance plan is the decision’s most consequential holding.

Third, the court held that it cannot order TotalEnergies to adopt specific mitigation measures – not the IPCC’s P1 pathway, not the IEA’s NZE scenario, not any particular production reduction target. The loi de vigilance creates an obligation of means, not of result. The legislature deliberately left the content of “reasonable measures” to the company, subject to judicial review of whether those measures are adequate given the identified risks. A court that prescribed the trajectory would be substituting its judgment for the company’s on a question of energy strategy and industrial policy – a substitution the statute neither requires nor permits. The restraint is consistent with the framework’s self-regulatory design, and with the separation of powers objection that TotalEnergies itself had raised.

The Transnational Reach

The loi de vigilance’s scope extends to subsidiaries, subcontractors, and suppliers wherever they are located. The Scope 3 holding amplifies this dramatically. TotalEnergies must now map, within its vigilance plan, the combustion emissions arising from products sold by subsidiaries operating across more than 120 countries. Done honestly, that exercise produces a global emissions inventory organized by operational jurisdiction. The legal consequence is that a French statute – applied by a French court, in proceedings brought by French civil society – now governs how one of the world’s largest energy groups accounts for climate impacts generated in Angola, Iraq, the United States, Brazil, and dozens of other states.

This is a Brussels Effect dynamic, but operating through litigation rather than regulation. The CS3D will not apply to in-scope companies until July 2029, and the CSRD, while already operative for the largest EU-based Wave 1 reporters, does not reach non-EU parent companies until 2029 at the earliest. The loi de vigilance, by contrast, is already operative and enforceable through litigation, as this judgment confirms. More structurally, it imposes obligations on the French parent company in respect of its subsidiaries’ global activities, without requiring those subsidiaries to be independently in scope of any regulatory regime. For companies with supply chains or subsidiaries connected to French multinationals, the practical pressure to align with the plan’s requirements, however those requirements are ultimately defined, will be felt across jurisdictions. The decision did not address the sovereignty implications of this reach, and probably could not within its proper remit. That question is now one for scholars, trade lawyers, and regulators to work through.

Provisional Enforcement and What Comes Next

The court ordered provisional enforcement of its judgment, on the basis that the prevention of climate-related risks is a matter of undisputed urgency (§ 257). TotalEnergies has six months from service of the decision to supplement its vigilance plan. The supplemented plan must include Scope 3 emissions in the risk mapping and in the associated measures. The case is then referred back to the pre-trial judge on 21 January 2027, at which point the court will examine whether the plan complies.

Provisional enforcement means the obligation runs even if TotalEnergies appeals – which seems near-certain. The appellate court could grant a stay, but the climate urgency framing makes that legally and politically awkward. More important is what the six-month window actually demands.

On the legal side, TotalEnergies must make methodological choices the court deliberately left open: which GHG Protocol categories to use, how to handle double-counting across jurisdictions, how to treat asset disposals in light of carbon lock-in risk, and which IPCC scenarios anchor the severity assessment. The court did not prescribe any of this. The quality of those choices will determine the entire second round.

On the science side, a credible Scope 3 mapping requires TotalEnergies to quantify emissions that, in 2024, it reported at 342 MtCO₂ – roughly ten times its Scope 1 and 2 combined footprint (§ 167). Once those emissions are inside the plan, the company must also publish “appropriate measures to mitigate risks or prevent serious harm” in respect of them. The measures need not follow any externally mandated trajectory, but they cannot be cosmetic. What constitutes reasonable mitigation of a 342 MtCO₂ Scope 3 risk, in a company whose business model is built on growing hydrocarbon production, is the question the January 2027 hearing will have to answer.

That is the architecture. The court has built the room and fixed the dimensions. The substantive contest – whether TotalEnergies’ chosen measures are adequate, and what happens if they are not – has been deferred, not avoided. The Article 1252 Code civil claim, which could in principle support broader injunctive relief, has been stayed pending the outcome of that second round. The financial pressure is modest for now: €20,000 in Article 700 costs per claimant, no penalty payment.

Why This Matters Beyond France

The decision is significant not because it orders TotalEnergies to do something dramatic, but because it demonstrates that a domestic due diligence statute, interpreted through the lens of international scientific and normative consensus, can reach the full climate footprint of a global energy major. The statutory foundations – environment includes climate, Scope 3 results from company activities – are now established in French law. Other jurisdictions with comparable duty-of-care or due diligence frameworks, from Germany’s Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz to any future transposition of the CS3D, will be watching how the second round unfolds.

If the architecture works – if the January 2027 hearing produces a meaningful assessment of whether TotalEnergies’ measures are adequate –, the model becomes replicable. If it does not, the decision will stand as an important but ultimately inconclusive milestone. The six months between now and the filing of the supplemented plan are, in that sense, the most consequential period of the entire litigation.

The paragraph beginning “This is a Brussels Effect dynamic…” was slightly expanded after initial publication to include the scope of CS3D and CSRD.

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