This contribution is part of our joint online symposium with the Völkerrechtsblog on the topic: “Tackling Human Rights, Environmental Protection and Business – A Multilevel Approach“
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A contribution from Nicolò Andreotti*
The European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) marks a decisive step in the Union’s climate policy framework. By designating renewable projects as being of “overriding public interest” and streamlining permitting processes, RED III aims to accelerate the rollout of wind, solar, and other renewable installations. This acceleration is indispensable for decarbonisation. However, such procedural streamlining does not come without cost. Fast-tracking can sideline environmental safeguards and limit community participation, creating risks for both human rights and ecosystems. Corporate developers — the primary actors implementing these projects — may become the main beneficiaries of RED III’s urgency logic. By relying on compliance with streamlined procedures, corporations may avoid substantive examination of whether their projects respect human rights and environmental standards. Against this backdrop, this blog post argues that RED III risks shielding corporations from accountability in the name of climate urgency, especially without an adequate legal framework of corporate social responsibility.
From Climate Urgency to “Due Diligence Displacement”
RED III’s streamlining provisions establish strict deadlines for permitting authorities and limit grounds for objection. Projects in “go-to areas” benefit from even faster approvals. By elevating renewable projects to the status of presumptive overriding public interest, RED III produces what may be called a “due diligence displacement effect”. By compelling Member States to accelerate approvals, RED III reduces the space for environmental assessments, consultations, and precautionary measures. In practice, this policy line shifts the burden of responsibility away from corporations — which gain privileged legal status — and onto communities and ecosystems, which face weaker protections.
Furthermore, unlike the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which explicitly refers to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in its Annex II, RED III does not mention corporate social responsibility, due diligence, or human rights safeguards. This omission is striking, given the scale of corporate involvement in renewable energy infrastructure. By focusing exclusively on acceleration and designating such projects as being of overriding public interest, RED III effectively grants developers regulatory privileges without attaching parallel accountability obligations.
RED III’s silence on corporate social responsibility might have been mitigated by the forthcoming Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Yet, even this parallel framework reveals critical shortcomings. While Article 29 establishes a civil liability regime, it remains narrow and fault-based. Companies are only liable where intent or negligence can be proven. This means that corporations can evade responsibility if they show they acted without fault, even when harm occurred. Equally concerning is the fact that the CSDDD does not provide remedies for pure environmental damages unless such harm can be directly linked to the legal interests of persons. Ecosystem destruction or biodiversity loss without identifiable human victims thus falls outside the liability regime — despite being among the most pressing sustainability concerns (see e.g., the proposed recognition of “ecocide” as a crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court). The European Ombudsman called for a revision of the CSDDD to address loopholes and ensure stronger enforcement mechanisms.
The result is a dangerous mismatch: Corporations benefit from accelerated permitting under RED III, while the parallel accountability regime remains both delayed and underdeveloped. In practice, this could allow companies to frame compliance with RED III procedures as sufficient, while substantive due diligence is postponed, diluted, or displaced into a future framework. Rather than establishing a coherent regime that balances acceleration with responsibility, the EU risks producing a two-track system: fast-track rights for corporations, and slow, uncertain remedies for communities.
Case Studies
Several examples illustrate this risk. In Finland, EPV Tuulivoima Oy planned to build 54 turbines on reindeer herding lands near Natura 2000 sites. Despite consultations and compensation offers, courts annulled approvals, finding that the project violated constitutionally protected rights to a healthy environment and traditional livelihoods. The company relied on procedural compliance as a defence, but courts held that such compliance alone was insufficient to discharge broader human rights obligations.
Similarly, residents challenged the French energy company Neoen over its 96-hectare solar project in Portugal in January 2024. They alleged an inadequate environmental assessment, a lack of consultation, and risks to biodiversity and water access. Neoen insisted it had complied with every regulatory step. This case demonstrates the limits of a purely compliance-based defence: doing things “by the book” may not suffice when fast-tracking procedures exclude meaningful community engagement. Under the RED III’s urgency framework, corporations may increasingly invoke procedural compliance to deflect accountability for substantive harms, creating a real risk that legal compliance may replace ethical and rights-based responsibility.
These cases reveal a pattern: corporations rely on compliance with permitting rules, while communities argue that these rules — especially under accelerated regimes like RED III — are insufficient to ensure the protection of their rights. The result is a legal paradox: the EU is simultaneously tightening corporate due diligence requirements while creating regulatory shortcuts that make such diligence practically redundant.
Pathways for Accountability
National courts remain the primary venues for challenging corporate projects. The Finnish case demonstrates that constitutional rights — including the right to a healthy environment and protection of Sámi reindeer herding — can outweigh corporate interests and EU-level climate priorities. Even when legal remedies exist, high costs, limited legal standing, and fragmented national rules make it difficult for communities to hold corporations accountable in practice. In those Member States where strong environmental regimes are not guaranteed, judicial review may be narrower, leaving affected groups with fewer tools to claim their rights. Yet RED III embeds urgency into EU law itself, allowing developers to claim they met all regulatory requirements even when risks of violations are not properly addressed. A comparative law analysis reveals that some jurisdictions recognise a “regulatory compliance defence” — as discussed, for instance, by Stalenhoef, de Jong and Faure here — shielding companies from liability when acting under valid permits. The RED III’s fast-track framework risks reinforcing this corporate defence. Courts will need to clarify that due diligence duties are substantive, not merely procedural, and cannot be displaced by RED III’s urgency logic. Corporate accountability should not hinge on procedural checkboxes.
Alternatively, or in addition to national courts, RED III provisions may be subject to judicial review before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Where the root problem lies in EU’s own acts — such as the designation of a project as strategic or the legislative choice to grant presumptive overriding public interest status — the most effective remedy is to challenge the validity of such acts. While NGOs have made progress in climate litigation (e.g., Carvalho and Others), procedural standing remains a bottleneck (see in this regard the opinion of AG Emiliou in Case C-731/23 P). Given the standing criteria established in Plaumann, the realistic route for NGOs or affected communities is to litigate nationally, prompting a preliminary reference to the CJEU. This would enable the Court to assess whether RED III’s acceleration regime, or specific Commission implementing acts, are compatible with EU Treaties. Through preliminary references, national courts can invite the CJEU to assess whether RED III’s streamlining provisions, or the Commission’s implementing acts, are compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and general principles of law.
Finally, the European Court of Human Rights offers an additional albeit indirect pathway. Although the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not explicitly guarantee a right to a healthy environment, Articles 2 and 8 have been interpreted to cover environmental harms. Strasbourg can hold states accountable for failing to adequately regulate and oversee corporate activity. Recent climate cases, such as KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, show the Court’s willingness to engage with state duties in the climate context — a pathway that could extend to renewable energy projects where corporate shortcuts undermine rights.
Taken together, these mechanisms illustrate that accountability remains possible — but only through complex, fragmented and often delayed pathways that poorly match the speed RED III demands for project approvals. Without deliberate safeguards, corporations may exploit procedural compliance as a shield, weakening the EU’s due diligence agenda and undermining the principle that fast-track projects must also respect human rights.
Conclusion: No Green Transition Without Rights
RED III captures the European Union’s genuine sense of climate urgency. Yet, urgency must not serve as an alibi for weakening corporate accountability. By prioritising speed over safeguards, RED III risks creating a regulatory paradox: corporations are given privileged access to fast-track approvals, while communities face only fragmented and delayed remedies when their rights are compromised. This dynamic is at the heart of what may be called a due diligence displacement effect: procedural acceleration takes the place of substantive accountability.
In principle, the CSDDD could have filled this gap. In practice, however, its fault-based liability regime, its exclusion of pure environmental harms, and its exemptions for harms caused by business partners present critical loopholes. The European Ombudsman’s call for revision underscores the fragility of the current framework. Unless corporate accountability obligations are integrated into the heart of RED III, the Directive risks institutionalising a compliance defence that shields developers from responsibility.
A just transition process cannot be built on regulatory shortcuts that privilege corporations while sidelining communities. Fast-tracking is necessary — but it must be coupled with enforceable corporate accountability. The EU must ensure that speed and responsibility advance together, or risks trading one crisis for another.
* Nicolò Andreotti is a PhD candidate in International and EU Law at the University of Padua, Italy, specialising in the intersection of international investment law, natural resources, and environmental regulation. He has also held visiting research positions at Leiden University and the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy in Dundee.
Suggested Citation: Nicolò Andreotti, Fast-Tracking the Green Transition in the EU, jean-monnet-saar 2025.
DOI: 10.17176/20251030-094446-0
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project No.: 525576645
