The second ruling on the merits of the 2017 Duty of Vigilance Law was pronounced on March 12, 2026. The case concerned an abroad subsidiary of a French company.

Less than one year after the ruling against La Poste of the Appeal Court, that had ordered the defendant to rewrite its vigilance plan, this time the first instance Paris Judicial Court (34th civil chamber held that the cosmetics company Yves Rocher must pay compensation to workers and unions on the basis of a deficient vigilance plan.

The Facts

In 2012 the company Laboratoires de Biologie Végétale Yves Rocher (LBYR), a Brittany based family business acquired the majority of the KKS company with a factory in Gebze, Türkiye. As part of this process the KKS was audited. The audit underlined the “conditions of unionization in Turkey and the tendency of Turkish companies to hinder unionization in order to avoid having to enter into collective bargaining agreements that might provide benefits to workers.”

In January 2018, the PETROL-Iş Union launched a union membership drive resulting in the membership of 157 out of 379 KKS workers, a fact challenged by the company. In May 2018, 132 workers were laid off, which caused protests in front of the factory; the case was brought before the labor inspectorate and court. Subsequently, in June 2018, LBYR audited the site, integrated the subsidiary into operations and drafted a collective settlement agreement that was signed by 126 employees.

In 2021 LBYR acquired 100% of the KKS which became a subsidiary of the LBYR group until it was eventually sold to a Turkish company in 2024. LYBR had drafted the 2017 and 2018 vigilance plans in time and annexed them to the General Assembly reports yet only published and deposited them before the court in June 2020.  

The plans only deal with activity risks of suppliers and subcontractors; no methodology is visible to deal with the risks of subsidiaries. This deficiency was confirmed by another audit mandated by LYBR in 2020.

The Procedure

After a formal notice required by Art. L. 225-102-4 -II of the Code Civil, the French NGOs Sherpa and Action Aid France, the union Petrol-Iş and initially 34 KKS workers filed a lawsuit against LYBR requesting injunctive relief against the vigilance plan and asking for compensation payments. The relief request was later abandoned as KKS was no longer controlled by LYBR and only nine workers retained standing. The plaintiffs argued that the deficient vigilance plans due to the absence of reporting on the layoffs and the union’s activity directly caused prejudice to the workers and the union.

The defendant pleaded that Turkish law was applicable as lex loci damni (law of the venue of the damage) under Art. 4 Rome II Regulation and that a five-year limitation applied since the facts occurred in 2018. Should the court consider the French law to be applicable this could not be the basis for compensation payments under French tort law.

The Ruling

The Court chose to apply French law based on Art. 16 of the Rome 2 Regulation (846/2007) considering the vigilance law as overriding mandatory provisions and an exemption to the lex loci damni rule of Art. 4.

The court, in its discretionary liberty considered that the two conditions necessary to apply the Art. 16 exemption, which are a sufficiently strong link with the (French) territory and a fundamental interest to protect the legal order in this country, were met. The latter is extensively augmented by the parliamentary debate of the French vigilance law, the UN Guiding Principles, the Rana Plaza accident and the text of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) (2024/1760). The defendant’s argument that the CSDDD had been superseded by the Omnibus Directive was rejected stating that national civil liability schemes were not affected by the Omnibus Directive and only the harmonization of the schemes was abandoned.  (More on the Rome 2 argumentation and CJEU jurisprudence can be found here by Prof. Geert Calster)

The 5 years limitation period of Art. 2224 of the French Civil Code subsequently only ran as of the (late) publication of the vigilance reports in June 2020 when the plaintiffs were able to state the shortcomings of the plans and not as of the date of the events in 2018.

The court then argues in-depth the conditions to award compensation under French tort law which are fault, prejudice and the casual link.

The fault was the non-compliance with the obligations to establish a vigilance plan as specified in Art. 225-102-1 of the French Code of Commerce.

Here the court recalls that companies do not have to prevent or mitigate all impacts of their activity but only those with severe impact. Reference is made here to UN Guiding Principle 24.  Further references are made to Art. 21, 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),  Art. 8 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and  International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions 87 and 98, all referred to in the Annex of the CSDDD.

The vigilance report 2018 of LBYR had only focused on suppliers’ and subcontractors’ risks and not those of subsidiaries, which constitutes an element of fault for the court.

The ruling then quotes several witness statements clearly showing the link between union activities and the subsequent layoffs of the workers. As these facts were known to the company, the court rejected the argument that facts had been hidden by the local management.

Had LBYR addressed this issue in its vigilance plans, the prejudice of the lay offs could have been avoided, the casual link is therefore established. Given existence of the three elements the compensation provisions of Art. 225-202-2 Code du Commerce and 1240, 1241 Code Civil apply.

The court therefore held that LBYR had violated its obligations and was required to pay 8000 Euros as compensation to six workers, 40.000 Euros to the union, and symbolic damages of one euro to Sherpa and Action Aid ordering provisional enforcement of the ruling, meaning the plaintiffs can proceed with the enforcement of the judgment against LYBR, notwithstanding any appeals to come. It is however likely that LYBR will file an appeal even if it has not announced that it will do so, to date.

Why is This a Landmark Ruling and What Should Companies Learn?

This ruling of the 34^th chamber of the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris can be seen as landmark for several reasons.

For the first time remedy was granted to workers in compliance with UNGP 25 through the 2017 French vigilance law for a violation of their basic human rights – freedom of association and freedom from discrimination, stressing the companies’ obligations to protect them.  The court’s solid argumentation is based on well-argued Private International Law, references to international texts and standards such as the ICCPR, the ICESCR and ILO conventions and publications.

The Judgement also refers to the CSDDD and this sheds light not only on the French transposition of the Directive but also on the impacts on companies concerned (more than 5000 employees) in other Member States and outside the EU. All these companies have a vital interest to conduct a proper risk based due diligence as described in Art. 5 to 16 of the CSDDD. These articles contain the notions of severity and likelihood developed by Prof. John Ruggie and his team in the UNGPs, reiterated by the Paris court as essential elements of a vigilance plan under the French law and which were neglected by Yves Rocher as defendant.

This growing jurisprudence on vigilance obligations in France is valuable input for the post transposition phase of the CSDDD. French courts are pioneering the way for other European courts which will likely grapple with similar issues after 2028, once the CSDDD enters into force in the EU member states.