Multinational companies under international law

Multinational corporations have become key players in the new economic world order. Their numbers and power continue to grow in the contemporary international order. Faced with this rise, a debate has begun to rage. What exactly is their status under international law? There are two opposing trends in international law concerning the international legal status of multinational corporations. These are the minimalist and the maximalist. At the end of the debate between the minimalist and maximalist views, we found that multinational enterprises are in fact in an international legal vacuum. No treaty of international law concerns them. The few international texts that do concern them are not binding. The constant factor is that states are not really willing to adopt tough standards for them, but also the pressure exerted by certain multinational enterprises (MNEs). But this legal vacuum does not necessarily mean that they are completely absent from international law. They are taken into account by international law in other ways.