“Principle 4: "States should take additional steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that are owned or controlled by the State, or that receive substantial support and services from State agencies such as export credit agencies and official investment insurance or guarantee agencies, including, where appropriate, by requiring human rights due diligence”.
Commentary: States individually are the primary duty-bearers under international human rights law, and collectively they are the trustees of the international human rights regime.
Where a business enterprise is controlled by the State (as is the case with ENI) or where its acts can be attributed otherwise to the State, an abuse of human rights by the business enterprise may entail a violation of the State’s own international law obligations. Moreover, the closer a business enterprise is to the State, or the more it relies on statutory authority or taxpayer support, the stronger the State’s policy rationale becomes for ensuring that the enterprise respects human rights.
Where States own or control business enterprises, they have greatest means within their powers to ensure that relevant policies, legislation and regulations regarding respect for human rights are implemented.
Senior management typically reports to State agencies, and associated government departments have greater scope for scrutiny and oversight, including ensuring that effective human rights due diligence is implemented.
A range of agencies linked formally or informally to the State may provide support and services to business activities. These include export credit agencies, official investment insurance or guarantee agencies, development agencies and development finance institutions. Where these agencies do not explicitly consider the actual and potential adverse impacts on human rights of beneficiary enterprises, they put themselves at risk – in reputational, financial, political and potentially legal terms – for supporting any such harm, and they may add to the human rights challenges faced by the recipient State (In the case of ENI, besides the Ministry of Economics and the Treasury Office, the “agency linked formally” is the “CDP Bank” - Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA).
Italian government is an "adherent nation" to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP 31).
So, why does Italy, in my case, doesn't fulfill the "Principle 04" (The State-Business Nexus)?
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