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.
What would happen to Czech power grid in 2030 if all coal power plants were shut down? On 24 May we have publicly presented a study which simulates this scenario. The result is that even without coal-fired generation it is possible to ensure stable electricity supply in the Czech Republic. The scenario includes an increase in renewables to which the current state of the power grid is no obstacle.
Czech Supreme Administrative Court ruled today in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in Brno, a Czech city with 370 thousand inhabitants. The Court revoked the city's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment. The reasoning of the ruling has not been made public yet, but the main argument against the plan was that it was not effective enough and would not lead to a swift achievement of the binding air quality standards. A similar ruling was issued in December 2017 with respect to Ostrava and in February 2018 regarding Prague and Usti region.
Czech Supreme Administrative Court ruled yesterday in favour better protection of human health from air pollution in Usti region on the northern border of the Czech Republic. The Court partially revoked the region's Air Quality Management Plan, issued in 2016 by the Czech Ministry of Environment.
