Domestic political opportunism and foreign anti-competitive pressure threaten to dismantle one of its biggest advantages. Read below a brief summary of our conference on sustainability and competitiveness held last January 2025 in Brussels.
Our Frankly Speaking conference offered a space this January for an honest and constructive discussion on competitiveness and sustainability, including key options for meaningful simplification in the announced Omnibus.
As Filip Gregor (Head of the Responsible Companies section at Frank Bold) highlighted in his introduction, we are living in a much more problematic geopolitical context than in 2019:
In this environment, Europe’s safety and autonomy is at stake. The EU’s competitiveness strategy must:
MEP Lara Wolters in her powerful opening remarks stressed that in the face of these geopolitical challenges, European leaders must focus on delivering prosperity while avoiding a race to the bottom in social and environmental standards. The CSRD and CSDDD are important tools to ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of businesses.
While implementation is likely to pose some challenges which should be addressed, backtracking would be unhelpful, penalise companies that have proactively prepared as well as damage the credibility of the EU.
Speakers at the conference emphasized critical priorities to EU leaders for future work on sustainability policy:
Sustainability is a competitive advantage and a growth opportunity as pointed out by Mario Draghi. In the Digital Age, sustainability and ESG data are key for long-term success. They also represent a rare chance for the EU's digital economy.
Raising thresholds to exclude tens of thousands of EU companies from the ESG framework won’t improve competitiveness.
For businesses to harness the sustainability advantage, they need a legal framework and standards for sustainability reporting, legal certainty, clear guidance and less emphasis on compliance.
To make CSRD implementation easier, companies would most benefit from a gradual timeline for implementation and audit, and review of the EU reporting standards in the light of first reporting experience of very large listed companies.
Organisations involved with the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) express their deep concern over the European Commission's proposal to exempt asset management from the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Read our joint letter below.
A new legal briefing by Frank Bold unpacks the new restrictions on information requests to business suppliers following the Omnibus 1 revisions to the CSRD and CSDDD, and explains the practical implications for companies.
Due diligence under the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) is designed to direct finite corporate resources towards the issues that matter most for people and the environment. At the heart of that effort is prioritisation, defined in Article 9 of the Directive. Having spoken about this topic at the RBA conference this week, I want to share some reflections on what good prioritisation looks like in practice and what pitfalls to avoid.
