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.
Frank Bold Society and the Neighbourhood Association Uhelná have drawn up a document with seven basic requirements that the Czech side should insist on when negotiating with Poland. See the press release for background information.
In the face of recent opposition addressed to the EU Commission by some business associations and specific governments from Nordic Europe, NGOs have reiterated their support for the European Commission commitment to present an initiative on Sustainable Corporate Governance in 2021, following the roadmap set in the EU Green Deal and the Action Plan on Sustainable Finance.
As part of the reform of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive, the European Commission plans to develop mandatory EU sustainability reporting standards. The analysis of the non-financial reports of 1000 European companies by the Alliance for Corporate Transparency has proven how companies fail to report relevant, specific and comparable information. While this is true for all sustainability matters, it is particularly exacerbated in the case of corporate impacts and risks along the supply chain.
