The negative external effects of profit oriented businesses on the environment and society have become increasingly visible following the financial crisis, and are most extreme in developing countries where high corruption rates often impede meaningful enforcement of existing legislation and where compensation measures for adversely affected groups rarely exist.

Caste-based discrimination is a serious human rights violation negatively affecting the political, economic, social, cultural, and civil rights of approximately 260 million people worldwide. This briefing by Susanne Langsdorf (Ecologic Institute) for the European Parliament aims to assess to what extent the EU has integrated the fight against caste-based discrimination in its external relations. Light is shed on the specific situations in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Yemen and the European Union's actions to address caste-based discrimination in these countries. Based on the analysis, the briefing elaborates recommendations on how the EU can mainstream the fight against caste-based discrimination into policies, strategies and programmes as well as dialogues with countries with caste systems. The briefing is available for download.

The committees of the European Parliament play a critical role in ensuring the effectiveness of EU policy during both the development of legislation and policy and its subsequent implementation. The Committee on Foreign Affairs (Affaires étrangères, AFET) is one of the 20 Committees of the European Parliament and is, among others, responsible for the Common Foreign Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Ecologic Institute was leading a consortium of six institutes given a framework contract to provide the European Parliament’s Foreign Policy Committees with independent expert advice on a range of issues relating to developmental and environmental policy. During the course of this project, standard briefings, ad-hoc briefings, studies and workshops were conducted.