It's my pleasure to welcome everyone to this hybrid setting.

So we have a couple of people in the real room here in Nürnberg, but I guess the majority

of our participants are joining online.

It's my pleasure and privilege to welcome Markus Löhning with us.

Markus Löhning is for me the number one practitioner of business and human rights in Germany.

He is the founder and managing director of Löhning Human Rights and Responsible Business,

a consultancy with the Mainz in Berlin.

Markus has a practice, practical background in business.

He was 15 years in business communications.

Then he was in politics for about 10 years.

He was member of the German parliament and then he was the federal commissioner for human

rights of the German government.

And so he brings to his practical work right now both of course experience in business

and in politics.

And we're very fortunate that he is with us today.

And yeah, Markus, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much.

Markus, thank you very much for having me, for inviting me and thank you all for being

there tonight.

So I'll take you through a couple of slides and try to talk a bit about the work we do,

some backgrounds and at the end I'll also have some slides looking into the future,

what are next steps in business and human rights.

Feel free to ask questions.

I'm not sure I can see when you raise your hand so someone should intervene or just ask

questions at the end of what I'm saying.

So speaking for around 45 minutes, something like that.

Okay, so when I'm doing to make this move, it doesn't work.

Okay, so this is my agenda for today.

So why did I start actually a management consultancy and not an NGO?

And what kind of pressures do companies actually have to comply with human rights?

Then I'll talk about some practical aspects.

So how do we actually establish human rights to diligence processes inside companies?

And I have four real life cases.

These are four clients that we work for whose reports are public so I can talk about that

and each of them is from a different perspective on the same issue at the end of the day.

And then I have a few questions on what's next and I have some ideas of what should

happen next.

So that's me.

And Marcus was saying I've been in politics for around 10 years.

I was a member of parliament, traveling a lot because I was a development spokesperson

and I was spokesperson for European affairs, I've seen a lot of countries.

And then I was the European, I was the German commissioner for human rights and I've been

active in party politics in Germany but also beyond.

Like I was the chair of the Human Rights Committee of Liberal International, which is the global

federation of liberal parties.

I've been working as a vice president of the European federation of liberal parties.

So why did I start a management consultancy and not an NGO?

When my mandate as human rights commissioner was ending, it was clear that I wanted to

do something meaningful and I wanted to stay in human rights.

I couldn't imagine going to a public relations agency or something like that.