By Katarina Mirkovic
On 17 December 2025, the Cantonal Court of Zug issued an interim ruling (Zwischenentscheid) in case A1 2023 9, dispatched to the parties on 18 December and made public on 22 December 2025, holding that a climate-related civil claim brought by four residents of Pari Island, Indonesia, against Holcim AG satisfies the procedural requirements to be heard. The ruling does not address liability. It addresses something prior, and in many ways more consequential: whether the claim is framed in a manner that allows a Swiss civil court, in principle, to adjudicate and enforce it.[1]
That distinction matters. What is decided here is not responsibility for climate harm, but access to adjudication. Holcim has announced that it will challenge the decision on appeal, and Swiss media reported the same day that the company intends to take the case to the next instance. What remains, however, is a reasoned judicial statement that climate-related harm, when pleaded in private-law terms, does not dissolve into politics at the courthouse door.[2]
1. What is this case, in plain terms, and why it is not “just politics”
The narrative underpinning the case is simple. The plaintiffs live on Pari Island and allege that rising sea levels have led to increasingly frequent flooding, affecting their property, daily life, and long-term security. They argue that Holcim contributes to that harm through greenhouse-gas emissions associated with its cement business, and that this contribution can ground civil-law remedies.[3]
The court does not deny the political dimension of climate change. What it does deny is that political salience, as such, deprives a claim of its civil character. Where plaintiffs plead an infringement of private-law rights, seek recognised civil remedies, and assert an individual legal interest worthy of protection, the dispute remains justiciable. The court makes this point explicitly, anchoring it in Switzerland’s constitutional guarantee of access to a judge.[4]
Climate harm is not treated as an abstract policy concern, but as something capable of being translated into procedural justiciability under Swiss civil litigation rules. The question is not whether climate change is political. It is whether politics exhausts the legal meaning of the claim. The court’s answer is no.
2. The record matters: what is actually in the court file (timeline and procedural steps)
Given the attention the case has attracted in public commentary, it is worth fixing what is not speculation. This is not a claim improvised for media effect.
Conciliation proceedings were formally initiated on 11 July 2022 before the Peace Court in Zug. Authorisation to sue was granted on 6 October 2022, with conciliation costs of CHF 600 charged to the claimants.[5] The civil action was filed on 30 January 2023.[6] On 30 June 2023,[7] the reporting judge limited the proceedings to questions of admissibility. The main hearing on those issues took place on 3 September 2025,[8] following two rounds of written submissions by each side and additional document production by Holcim. These steps are also reflected in public materials released by HEKS.[9]
This procedural density matters. It signals that the court is not responding to a symbolic dispute, but to a structured civil file that has been narrowed, argued, and documented over time. What is at stake is not a press release, but a case.
3. What the plaintiffs actually asked for (numbers, baselines, enforcement tools)
The relief sought is neither abstract nor rhetorical. The core request is an injunction (Unterlassungsbegehren), backed by an order fine of CHF 1,000 per day and a reference to Article 292 of the Swiss Criminal Code. It is pleaded on a group-wide basis, expressly covering Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.[10]
The requested emissions pathway is articulated with year-by-year milestones from 2025 to 2040, using 2019 as the baseline, and is supported by pleaded baseline emissions data in both absolute and intensity terms. Monetary claims are itemised in Indonesian Rupiah and include contributions for flood-protection measures on Pari Island, additional amounts for alleged present and future damage, and claims for moral satisfaction, with interest running from 11 July 2022.[11]
This is where the court answers the objection of vagueness with a practical observation: this is not a generic appeal to climate responsibility. It is a quantified claim, framed with enforcement mechanics.[12]
4. The three admissibility hurdles Holcim raised, and how the court dealt with them
Holcim’s procedural objections can be stated without rhetoric: wrong forum, wrong plaintiffs, wrong remedy.
4.1 Forum: “civil courts are not the place for global emissions”
On forum, the court’s response is anchored in civil procedure. Where a claim is pleaded in private-law terms and seeks private-law remedies, it falls within the jurisdiction of the civil courts, even if it arises against a globally charged factual background. This is why the decision is captioned as concerning protection of personality rights and claims for relief (Schutz der Persönlichkeit und Forderung).[13]
4.2 Standing and legal interest: “their interest is not personal enough”
On standing and legal interest, the court emphasises the requirement of a concrete Rechtsschutzinteresse.[14] What is notable is its explicit reliance on Article 29a of the Federal Constitution. The absence of broader societal implications is not the test. What matters is whether the plaintiffs plausibly assert an individual legal position of sufficient intensity.[15]
4.3 Determinacy: “you cannot enforce this, and it drags in subsidiaries”
On determinacy, the court adopts a governance-oriented lens. It notes that the pleaded baselines and scope distinctions allow supervision of compliance. It further relies on documents in the file indicating that Holcim’s board approves group-wide climate targets and is responsible for climate-related risks.[16] On that basis, the parent’s participation in group emissions is not treated as conceptually implausible at the admissibility stage. Questions of substantive liability, including group responsibility and factual control, are reserved for the merits.
This is the technical core of the ruling. The court does not endorse liability. It holds that the claim is structured in a way that allows liability to be assessed later.
5. Why Swiss companies should care, even if they are not cement producers
The practical signal is not that climate litigation is imminent for all Swiss companies. It is that Swiss procedural law is institutionally ready to host it. The significance of the Zug decision lies less in any substantive view on climate responsibility than in its procedural posture: admissibility is no longer a hypothetical debate conducted in memos and conference panels. A reasoned interim ruling has now stated, in a concrete file, that a climate-related claim can be pleaded in private-law terms with sufficient structure to be heard.[17]
That shift should matter to corporate defendants and in-house counsel even outside high-emissions sectors. Once the threshold is crossed, the dispute ceases to be a question of “whether courts will entertain this at all” and becomes a question of litigation management: of evidence, narrative, causation theories, remedies, and, ultimately, enforceability. In that sense, the court’s focus on determinacy is not technical trivia. It is an instruction on what plaintiffs must do to get in, and what defendants must anticipate: quantified baselines, pleaded milestones, and enforcement mechanics capable of judicial supervision.[18]
The decision also signals that corporate climate governance is not merely reputational content. Board-level targets, risk oversight statements, and group-wide climate strategies can become litigation scaffolding. Not because a court treats disclosure as a confession of liability, but because it uses internal governance material to make procedural judgments about control, participation, and the feasibility of the requested remedy. Companies should therefore read the case as a reminder that “governance” has a double life: it reassures markets and regulators, but it also creates an evidentiary surface that can be mobilised in court.[19]
Finally, the instinct to categorise climate claims as “political questions” is weakening. The Zug court does not deny the political dimensions of climate change. It treats them as background, not as a jurisdictional veto. This places Switzerland within a broader international pattern in which courts increasingly accept that private-law climate claims may be justiciable even when they interact with public policy, precisely because the claims are framed as infringements of individual legal positions and are pleaded with remedies that a judge can, at least in principle, enforce.
A useful analogue is Lliuya v. RWE before the Higher Regional Court of Hamm (Germany): not because the facts are identical, but because it clarifies what follows once a court agrees to hear a climate-harm claim against a major emitter. There, a Peruvian claimant sought a proportional contribution to adaptation measures (flood-protection works) on the theory that RWE’s historical emissions formed a measurable share of the relevant climate risk. The case makes explicit what climate tort litigation tends to become after admissibility: a contest over proof, in which risk, causation, and attribution are translated into legal standards of evidence. Zug, in that sense, is a threshold decision; Lliuya is a reminder of what the threshold leads to.[20]
The message, then, is not that liability has been found. It is that the procedural door is open, and that the arguments that follow will be fought on the terrain of private law rather than dismissed at the threshold.[21]
6. What happens next
The court classifies its ruling as a Zwischenentscheid for a reason. If the appellate court disagrees on admissibility, the case may end at the threshold.[22] If the decision stands, the dispute will move into the merits phase, where the familiar but difficult questions will arise: causation, wrongfulness, fault where relevant, quantification, and the proportionality of injunctive relief.
What the Zug court has decided is not how those questions should be answered. It has decided that they can, in principle, be asked.
Update (October 2026)
Holcim announced its intention to appeal as soon as the decision was made public, and the plaintiffs’ campaign reports that on 6 March 2026 the High Court of the Canton of Zug (Obergericht), like the Cantonal Court before it, granted the four plaintiffs legal aid, which indicates that the appeal proceedings are now pending before that court. As of 5 October 2026, no decision of the Obergericht on the appeal appears to have been made public, so that the interim ruling, however reasoned and significant, is not yet final, and the threshold question discussed above remains formally open until the appellate court has ruled on it.[23]
[1] Kantonsgericht Zug, “Entscheid des Kantonsgerichts Zug vom 17.12.2025 A1 2023 9”, title page and “betreffend Schutz der Persönlichkeit und Forderung (Prozessvoraussetzungen)”, pp. 1-2.
[2] SRF, “Gericht lässt Klimaklage zu”, 22.12.2025; ref.ch, 22.12.2025.
[3] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Sachverhalt”, para. 1, p. 4.
[4] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, section referencing Art. 29a BV, pp. 49-50.
[5] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Sachverhalt”, paras. 2-3, p. 4.
[6] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Sachverhalt”, para. 3, p. 4.
[7] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Sachverhalt”, para. 4, p. 4.
[8] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Sachverhalt”, para. 8, p. 5.
[9] HEKS/EPER, “Hauptverhandlung am 3. September”, media note.
[10] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Rechtsbegehren Kläger”, para. 1.1, p. 2.
[11] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Rechtsbegehren Kläger”, para. 1.1, pp. 2-3.
[12] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, “Rechtsbegehren Kläger”, paras. 2–5, pp. 2–3
[13] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, cover and section on Art. 59 ZPO, pp. 4-5; ref.ch report, 22.12.2025; SRF report, 22.12.2025.
[14] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, references to Art. 59 ZPO and discussion leading into the “besondere Betroffenheit”, pp. 4-5 and later cross-reference, p. 50.
[15] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, Art. 29a BV discussion, pp. 49-50.
[16] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, section 6.5.1, p. 48.
[17] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, dispositive reasoning “Auf die Klage ist demnach einzutreten”, p. 49 and continuation.
[18] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, section 6.5.2, p. 49, reference to “act. 1/25 S. 88”.
[19] Reuters, 22.12.2025; Business & Human Rights Resource Centre compilation, 22.12.2025 https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/swiss-court-admits-indonesia-islanders-climate-case-against-holcim-2025-12-22/
[20] Oberlandesgericht Hamm. (2025, May 28). Klage eines peruanischen Bergführers gegen RWE erfolglos – Urteil im Verfahren Lliuya gegen RWE (Az. 5 U 15/17).
[21] Reuters, 22.12.2025; Business & Human Rights Resource Centre compilation, 22.12.2025 https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/swiss-court-admits-indonesia-islanders-climate-case-against-holcim-2025-12-22/
[22] Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, section 9.2, pp. 51-52.
[23] Call for Climate Justice (campaign of HEKS/EPER and partner organisations), “Timeline”, entries of 17 December 2025 and 6 March 2026, https://callforclimatejustice.org/en/the-case/timeline/, accessed 5 October 2026; on the appealability of the interim ruling, Kantonsgericht Zug, A1 2023 9, dispositive part, para. 3, p. 52.
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