1. Aim of the chapter – This third preliminary chapter turns to the question of which entities can be addressed to mitigate “potentially harmful private business activities in or pertaining to illegally occupied territories” – which we defined in the previous chapter as private business activities that entail a risk of rendering aid or assistance to the maintaining of illegal occupations (see supra Chapter 2, no 15). Overall, there are three possible competent actors, who – each at their own level – have a role to play in the process of providing an adequate regulation of potentially harmful business conduct in or pertaining to illegally occupied territories: (1) the “host state”, which, in situations of illegal occupation, refers to the ousted sovereign (“victim state”) and the occupying power; (2) the private businesses operating in or with regard to illegally occupied territories; and (3) the home state, which is the state of nationality of these private businesses. In the case of far-going attribution of economic competencies to international organisations – as is the case in the context of the EU – the home “state” may also be a competent (supranational) international organisation. When this book refers to “home state (regulation)”, it, thus, also includes (regulation by) such competent international organisations. Their “corporate nationals” are then considered business enterprises incorporated, domiciled or having their headquarters or main centre of activities in one of the member states of the said organisations.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the role of European integration in peace and conflict resolution. It presents an argument about the potential of the concept of Europeanisation and the governance perspective in European Union studies to explain the effects of European integration on conflicts. It suggests that the historical pattern of the Europeanisation of conflict resolution is political in nature. This chapter also discusses the implications of the empirical findings for the theoretical debates in EU studies and international conflict resolution.

This chapter presents a case study on the role of the European Union (EU) in the conflict resolution of Northern Ireland. It describes the incremental nature of establishing a role for European integration in the conflict resolution process through policy tools, resources and political opportunities and analyses the role of EU institutions in inducing change in the domestic political opportunity structure conducive to intercommunal reconciliation. The analysis reveals that European integration has produced significant long-term transformative effects by enhancing communication, societal interaction and interest disaggregation.

The real environmental collapse endangering our existence and life on Earth has led most people to think about the future of mankind and to review various areas of our activities and institutions, to discover possible reserves and to allow the reduction of environmentally damaging externalities. This is the idea behind the Green Deal, one of the flagships of the European strategy for a better future, and the subsequent Circular Economy Action Plan. It is therefore understandable that private law has also become a natural space for critical review and the search for possible modifications of existing legal institutions to identify a scheme that can be modified to achieve some environmental savings.

The Sale of Goods Directive, the new directive on the consumer sale of goods, explicitly supports the principles of the circular economy (recital 32). Despite this innovative statement, the directive does not provide an overwhelming number of solutions for economic sustainability. It contains only one solution intended to support this particular purpose with respect to the issue of artificial obsolescence:5 the directive includes the notion of the objective requirements for conformity, and within those a durability requirement.

1. Aim of the chapter – The previous chapter has demonstrated that – besides the host state and the corporate actors – home states may play an essential role in tackling business activities of their corporate nationals that directly or indirectly render aid or assistance to the maintaining of illegal occupations. Building on this finding, the present chapter starts from the general premise that there is a need for home state regulation of potentially harmful private business activities in or pertaining to illegally occupied territories to complement the regulation of such activities by the “host states” – in casu the occupying power and, to a lesser extent, the ousted government (“victim state”) – and by corporations, which has often proved to be insufficient to, in and of themselves, provide a comprehensive framework to cope with the adverse effects of such business activities (see also supra Chapter 3, no 51). To underpin this premise, this chapter will explore the possible legal bases available under international law for such home state regulation. Two questions arise in this regard, which align with the two central research objectives of this chapter. The first one inquires to what extent international law permits home states to regulate potentially harmful private business activities in or pertaining to illegally occupied territories. Secondly, having established that international law de lege lata allows home state regulation of such activities (see infra, s 2), the analysis will be taken a step further and assess whether there is also an obligation incumbent on home states – and, by extension, competent international organisations – to do so. In this regard, the analysis will zoom in on different available legal avenues that have traditionally been advanced to substantiate the existence of mandatory home state regulation of potentially harmful business activities in or pertaining to illegally occupied territories.

This chapter presents a case study concerning the application of regional integration as a system of conflict resolution in the example of the Franco-German relationship of the 1950s. It traces early attempts to break the cycle of punitive peace between France and Germany, and analyses the meaning of Europeanisation during the 1950s as a strategy of peace-building accomplished through joint policy-making in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the institutionalisation of a customs union through the European Economic Community (EEC). This chapter also highlights the significance of Europeanisation for domestic political pluralism and for the politicisation of economic interdependence.

This chapter proposes a substantive vision of democracy called developmental democracy. It explains that the construction of this new vision of democracy is driven by an exploration of the full range of the democratic continuum. It discusses the framework for a developmental democracy and explains its five dimensions which include market development, human development, democratisation, participation and citizenship. This chapter evaluates the extent to which these five dimensions have been addressed by the United Nations and examines whether the individual parts of developmental democracy have become a greater whole or whether they remain fragmented in both theory and practice.

This chapter evaluates the potential future of United Nations (UN) democracy based on its conceptual history. It discusses how the three vehicles of definition—ideology, practice and vision—created very different realities for UN democracy. They all form essential parts in understanding what UN democracy is and how it has become institutionalised. This chapter shows how ideas and practice are intimately connected in the agenda-setting process at the UN and highlights the role of organisational actors in conceptualising ideas and creating practice. It also discusses how the vision of developmental democracy has highlighted the fact that democracy today is in a somewhat ambiguous place as it appeared to have a reached a conceptual endpoint towards the middle of the democratic continuum.