Laura Otýpková
Lawyer and Head of the Responsible Energy Team
An unprecedented decision was made at the Municipal Court in Prague in the historically first Czech climate litigation, for which Frank Bold Advokáti provided legal expertise.
According to the court, the state should now take the necessary measures to slow down climate change. In particular, it should take the necessary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the fields of energy, transport and forestry. The state was given six months to comply. This is the first similar decision in the Czech Republic, but we have seen the same decision to be made already by courts in Germany, the Netherlands or Ireland.
"The court, like the courts of other European and world states, has assumed that international climate protection obligations directly imply the rights of individuals. He stated that the measures set out in the strategic documents of the Czech ministries are clearly not sufficient to achieve even the minimum emission reduction target by 2030 set by the European Union,” summed up the court's verdict our lawyer Pavel Černý.
The Russian war in Ukraine has, in addition to the COVID-19 global pandemic, once again highlighted the need for corporate human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) regulation, such as the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
The next months are key to determining what kind of sustainability data companies will disclose. For the transformation to an economy within planetary boundaries, we call on the ISSB to develop standards that go beyond climate, require reporting on key impact data and ensure climate-related disclosures are sufficiently granular to be meaningful.
The European Commission, Parliament and Council reached an agreement for the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that clarifies disclosure obligations for large companies and listed SMEs, and mandates the development and adoption of mandatory EU corporate sustainability reporting standards.
