![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/059b22828be313ad0a6ce1e512249aee.webp\")
The lawsuit by farmer Hugues Falys is the first time a citizen in Belgium has brought a case against a multinational company (JOHN THYS) \u00b7 JOHN THYS\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n The lawsuit by farmer Hugues Falys is the first time a citizen in Belgium has brought a case against a multinational company (JOHN THYS) \u00b7 JOHN THYS\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n
A Belgian judge will rule Wednesday in a closely watched case pitting French oil giant TotalEnergies against a farmer seeking compensation for damage to his farm caused by climate change.<\/p>\n
Hugues Falys, a farmer from Belgium’s western Hainaut region, was backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace in the David-versus-Goliath case they hope could prove a turning point in the climate fight.<\/p>\n
Together they took TotalEnergies to court on the grounds the French group is Belgium’s leading refiner and distributor of petroleum products, launching the country’s first climate case brought against a multinational company.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs argue the firm can be held liable for global warming because of emissions generated when its products are burned — a claim rejected by TotalEnergies which accuses pressure groups of “instrumentalising the judiciary.”<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed in 2024 before the Tournai business court in western Belgium, and argued over a series of hearings between November and January, with a verdict due at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“The judges have everything they need to make the right decision,” Falys told AFP.<\/p>\n
“But it won’t be black and white, given the number of issues to be decided,” added the farmer, who also serves as spokesman for an agricultural union.<\/p>\n
Contacted by AFP, TotalEnergies declined to comment ahead of the ruling.<\/p>\n
Falys is seeking 130,000 euros ($150,000) in damages for four extreme weather events that struck his farm between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n
First a storm destroyed his strawberry and potato crops, then three periods of drought hurt fodder production, affecting cattle in turn.<\/p>\n
But the farmer and his backers are also seeking much broader action from TotalEnergies on countering climate change — notably for it to stop investing in new fossil-fuel projects.<\/p>\n
– Frequent target –<\/p>\n
The goals of the lawsuit are “reparation and transformation”, said Belgium’s human rights league (LDH), which is backing the complaint alongside Greenpeace and food\u2011rights organisation FIAN.<\/p>\n
Making its case in court, the company called it “absurd” to single out a particular firm over the pace of the energy transition — arguing that it accounts for less than two percent of the oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bit easy to blame energy producers for pollution and warming,” argued company lawyer Francoise Labrousse back in December, stressing the overarching role of governments in steering climate policy.<\/p>\n
“TotalEnergies doesn’t sell tractors, cars or boilers,” Labrousse argued, describing the group’s strategy to meet the EU’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 as “ambitious and effective”.<\/p>\n
TotalEnergies is a frequent target of climate and human rights activists, along with other oil giants.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Dutch courts issued a landmark ruling ordering Anglo\u2011Dutch giant Shell to cut its net carbon emissions, finding they contributed to global warming and its harmful effects.<\/p>\n
But the judgement was overturned three years later, when an appeals court found that an NGO and individual citizens could not make such demands.<\/p>\n
The case, known as “People vs. Shell”, is now before the Dutch Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
mad-ec\/ub\/gv\/jhb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lawsuit by farmer Hugues Falys is the first time a citizen in Belgium has brought a case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,4921,4920,4923,4922,4918,4917,4916,4919],"class_list":["post-6811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-caused-by-climate-change","tag-environmental-groups","tag-global-warming","tag-greenpeace","tag-hugues-falys","tag-multinational-company","tag-totalenergies","tag-watched-case"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116248880375480639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}