On the 22nd of May, the PAX Moot Eliminatory Round took place in Paris with 8 universities from all around Europe mooting a cross-border climate change case which addressed a number of complex transnational legal questions in Private International Law and was hosted by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
The Università Degli Studi di Milano team was composed by myself together with Adela Višnjić (second year students of the LL.M) and Elisabetta Stringhi (third year student of the LL.B). Prof. Albert Henke, Professor of International Investment Law, was the Academic Tutor.
This year inter-university PAX Moot organised by Sciences Po Law School was the 6th edition and has gone global to include teams from universities in Europe and beyond. That gave us, the participants, the possibility to interact and become friends with other young professionals that share the same passion for Private International Law aspects and Sustainable Development.
During the preparations, we had the chance to deepen our knowledge of Private International Law aspects as well as Sustainable Development aspects. Due to the fact that the Plaintiff (Luciano Diego Oliva a Bolivian farmer) alleges that the Claimant’s (a Dutch energy giant and the world’s fourth-largest electricity producer) industrial projects, including the construction of six giant dams upriver, are the cause of the immediate risk of overflow from a swollen glacier lake to his hometown of Rurrenabaque, situated along the bank of the Beni River. In addition the Plaintiff claim that, as one of the world’s top emitters of climate-altering carbon dioxide, DEG is more generally responsible for climate change and its deleterious effects on the health of farming communities, modes of production and cultural forms of life, specifically for the effects of climate change suffered in the past 10 years in Bolivia and Peru.
For the Eliminatory Round each team as to be prepared to plead on four main Private International Law Issues (as jurisdiction, and applicable law) for both the Plaintiff and the Claimant, as the moot case was an appeal before the Court of Appeals of Amsterdam.
As the moot case shares plenty in common with the Lluiya v. RWE, an ongoing law-suite in-front of the Oberlandesgericht (Civil Court of Appeals) of Hamm, Germany, we had the opportunity to research, formulate arguments and plead on a crucial contemporary topic and, in fact, practice as the litigators of the first International Climate Litigation Case Based on Private Law Liability.
On a personal note, it was an outstanding experience to pleaded before a distinguished panel of judges, which included Hans van Loon, Former Secretary-General of the HCCH (The Hague), and Agnès Maitrepierre from the Cour de Cassation in Paris. And an amazing opportunity to learn and improve our litigation skills (as formulating a coherent argument), particularly the ability to provide ‘on the spot’ response as part of the rebuttal and the counter-rebuttal.
