Big Oil faces mounting climate battles in European courts

From farmers to disaster survivors, new plaintiffs and progressing lawsuits are putting pressure on industry polluters.

Illustration by Tess Abbot

---

Just as fossil fuel majors are increasing oil production and profits amid worsening climate collapse worldwide, communities globally are ramping up their demands for accountability in court.

In the U.S., dozens of states and municipalities are suing oil companies, accusing them of deceiving the public for decades about their products’ role in fueling climate change. Last month, Puerto Rico sued fossil fuel companies for at least $1 billion in climate damages, making the territory’s Attorney General the tenth in the U.S. to file a climate lawsuit against oil and gas majors.

European courts have seen their own wave of climate accountability lawsuits in recent years, too, and a recent landmark ruling from Europe’s human rights court has bolstered the legal foundation for cases targeting industry polluters. 

In April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled the Swiss government violated its citizens’ human rights by failing to do more to address climate change. While the ruling was in a case where citizens are suing their own government, the precedent it set has far reaching implications, according to Director of the Center for International Environmental Law’s Climate and Energy Program, Nikki Reisch.

“It reinforces the bedrock, the legal foundation, for climate duties and accountability writ large,” Reisch said. 

On the heels of that decision, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that the climate impact of burning fossil fuels must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve new projects. 

“[These rulings] unequivocally recognize that the science on the causes and consequences of climate change is clear, that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and that science-aligned action is necessary and obligatory,” Reisch said, noting that climate accountability lawsuits against corporations will benefit from the rulings. “All of these cases are happening across the backdrop of these major wins in climate litigation development generally, even if they’re not all about fossil fuel accountability.”

While some lawsuits against Big Oil are still making their way through European courts, new plaintiffs have also joined the fray.

The farmers taking fossil fuel majors to court

It’s not just Olympic athletes in Paris feeling the heat — from heat waves to extreme weather conditions, outdoor and agricultural workers are particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. In European courts, farmers are taking up the fight against fossil fuel giants. 

Hugues Falys, a Belgian farmer, made history in March 2024 when he became the first individual person in Belgium to sue multinational corporation TotalEnergies, the largest oil and gas supplier in the country, for the damages he has suffered as a result of climate change. Falys’s case argues that Total downplayed the climate impacts it knew for decades its products would cause, and now that crisis has disrupted his livelihood as a farmer.

"Climate change is having a tangible impact on my work and life: yield losses, extra work, and the stress that comes from dealing with a disrupted crop calendar," Falys said in a press release. "In recent years, climate change has caused farmers a great deal of damage and left us uncertain about the future."

Falys’s lawsuit, which also lists Greenpeace and other nonprofit groups as plaintiffs, seeks compensation for that damage. 

“Those farmers have invested a lot to make a shift toward more sustainable practices, and yet they are the ones suffering, they are the ones on the climate frontlines, and they are the ones paying for the damages caused by others,” said Matthias Petel, President of the Environmental Justice Commission at the Ligue des droits humains — one of the NGOs behind the case. “We believe that it’s deeply unfair.”

The complaint also aims to make Total — one of the largest climate polluters in the world — comply with the Paris Agreement. Modeled in part after Dutch environmentalist group Milieudefensie’s winning case against Shell, the lawsuit demands that Total stop new investments in fossil fuel projects and reduce oil and gas production 47% by 2030 (with a 75% reduction by 2040). 

The case is still in the early stages, with parties discussing a timeline for legal proceedings.

Before Falys, there was Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian farmer who sued German fossil fuel company RWE in 2015 over climate damages. Lliuya’s suit — filed in German court — charges RWE with contributing to climate change, leading to accelerated glacial melting that is dramatically increasing water levels in Palcacocha Lake, the lake above Lliuya’s town of Huaraz, Peru. The court is currently awaiting expert testimony about the threat Lake Palcacocha presents to Lliuya’s home. 

Lliuya is asking the court to compel RWE to cover the costs required to safeguard his property from massive flooding based on RWE’s portion of global emissions since industrialization. While the dollar figure may ultimately be small, Reisch notes that Lliuya’s case holds legal significance because a German court allowed the case to proceed despite the climate harm happening in Peru. 

“It really tests the legal system’s ability to hold corporate polluters accountable for the foreseeable consequences of their conduct, regardless of where they occur,” Reisch said.

Greenwashing and homicide

From the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome to Hurricane Maria in 2017, several of the lawsuits against Big Oil in the United States reference lives lost to climate disasters. But a new criminal case filed in Paris does something that, in the U.S., has only been talked about so far: charges an oil giant with homicide.

In May 2024, three NGOs and eight survivors of climate disasters — many of whom lost homes and loved ones to an extreme weather event — sued Total for involuntary manslaughter. “Despite being perfectly aware that climate change kills, the directors and shareholders of the multi-billion-dollar multinational have made the choice to expand oil and gas production for a single reason: to maximize profits,” the groups wrote in a press release.

Climate homicide claims are backed by attribution science that can reveal how much climate change contributed to a specific weather event — and how much individual oil companies contributed to global emissions — along with growing evidence that those companies deceived the public about the dangers they knew fossil fuels would cause, The Lever reported this week.

Without accountability, one of the plaintiffs whose mother was killed in devastating floods during a 2020 storm in France told the outlet, “It’s just going to happen again and again and again.”

By the end of this month, the public prosecutor who received the complaint will decide whether to open a judicial investigation or dismiss the case.

Another lawsuit filed against Total by Greenpeace France in 2022 argues that the oil major’s deception isn’t just in the past. The case takes aim at the company’s modern-day greenwashing, maintaining that Total violated the European Unfair Practices Directive — a law that protects consumers from false and misleading advertising — with its claims to be ‘net zero’ by 2050 and advertising about the role gas and biofuels will play in the energy transition. That case is progressing in Paris judicial courts, and in the meantime, the EU is moving forward with directives aimed at regulating businesses’ greenwashing of environmental claims.

Big Oil looks for a way out

In 2021, Milieudefensie — along with several other environmental organizations and 17,000 individual co-plaintiffs — secured a major ruling against Royal Dutch Shell, with a Dutch court finding that Shell was violating Dutch and European human rights law by not adequately addressing its emissions. The court ruled that Shell must reduce its overall emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels — a ruling that Shell is currently appealing, claiming “Shell alone cannot directly influence the energy choices made by its customers.”

While Shell says consumers are responsible for using its products as intended, the company recently weakened its carbon reduction targets for 2030, citing uncertainty in the energy transition. Last year, its executives said they would continue to increase oil and gas production despite the company’s net-zero pledge.

Despite Shell’s continued appeal of the Milieudefensie case decision, the court’s landmark ruling has already inspired more activist groups to demand fossil fuel companies lower their emissions.

Greenpeace Italy, ReCommon, and 12 Italian citizens are suing fossil fuel giant Eni — as well as two Italian government entities that hold significant stake in the company — citing internal documents that show that “ENI, like the US oil companies, has been well aware of the relationship between CO2 emissions and climate change for decades,” but continues to deceive the public about their products, leading to human rights violations under Italian and European law. The lawsuit seeks to make Eni reduce emissions related to their operations by 45% by 2030, per Paris Agreement targets. 

After a lower court agreed to hear jurisdictional disputes brought by the oil company, Greenpeace and its fellow plaintiffs appealed the case to the Italian Supreme Court last month. But in the meantime, Eni has filed multiple requests for mediation — a required step in Italian law before bringing a lawsuit — accusing the groups of defamation. “We consider this an attempt to intimidate us,” said Chiara Campione, head of Greenpeace Italy’s Climate Unit, told ExxonKnews and DeSmog last year.

As the movement for climate accountability grows, an increasing number of oil companies are taking a similar route, filing lawsuits or otherwise using the courts to threaten and bankrupt opponents into silence. 

But advocates are prepared to fight back. Last month, Greenpeace International became the first to wield a new EU directive designed to prevent “abusive lawsuits” when it filed a claim against pipeline company Energy Transfer. In 2017, the energy giant sued the organization over its activism during the Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock. Under the new directive, Greenpeace can counter-sue Energy Transfer in Dutch court, where Greenpeace International is based, and recover damages for Energy Transfer’s lawsuit, which has now gone on for seven years.

In March, the Paris Judicial Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Total that sought to make Greenpeace France withdraw a report about the oil giant’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

“Justice confirms that the law protects our fundamental freedoms against attempts at intimidation by economic powers,” Clara Gonzales, legal expert at Greenpeace France, said at the time.

Despite Big Oil’s efforts to escape scrutiny, those seeking to hold it accountable in court are operating under an increasingly favorable legal framework, Reich explained. 

“The tide of climate litigation is unstoppable,” she said. “The trend is toward more and more climate cases being heard in courts, growing recognition that they belong there and that courts have a critical role to play in enforcing legal obligations in relation to the climate crisis. That’s the legal backdrop against which these cases are now unfolding.”