With less than a decade left to address the threat of climate change, the EU Commission has launched its Green Deal. And today, the EU Finnish Presidency conference on company law and climate change addresses the emerging consensus that businesses need to be held accountable for their contribution.
The recognition that sustainability in the EU and beyond needs to be embedded in corporate governance has led over 60 leading academics to endorse a statement that addresses the pressure and incentives for companies to prioritise short-term profits at the expense of environmental, social or even companies’ own long-term economic sustainability.
In order to clarify the obligations of company boards and directors and make corporate governance* practice significantly more sustainable and focused on the long term, the signatories recommend that:
The statement is signed by many highly respected voices in the fields of company law, corporate governance and management, including Robert G. Eccles (Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and previously Professor at Harvard Business School), Simon Deakin (Professor at the University of Cambridge), Katharina Pistor (Professor at the Columbia University) and Rick Wartzman (Executive Director of the Drucker Institute), Marie-Laure Djelic (Sciences Po), Blanche Segrestin (Mines ParisTech) and Beate Sjåfjell (University of Oslo).
Contact:
The statement remains open for signing - interested parties are encouraged to contact us at:
Jeroen Veldman
Associate Professor, Nyenrode Business University
jeroen.veldman@gmail.com
Susanna Arus
Communications and EU Public Affairs at Frank Bold
susanna.arus@frankbold.org
*The EU Commission’s Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth published in 2018 outlined preparatory work on sustainable corporate governance in Action 10. See here.
Whilst the European Parliament and the Council are in the midst of analysing and debating the Omnibus Simplification Package, we suggest our key changes for the co-legislators to implement to ensure that the CSRD is respected.
Following the European Commission’s announcement of its Omnibus Simplification Package at the end of February, both the Council and the European Parliament must now reach their own positions on the proposals, before the trilogue negotiations between all three bodies commence again.
At the end February, we exposed how the European Commission’s recently announced Omnibus proposals intend to modify corporate sustainability due diligence, reporting and taxonomy and how it will influence the effectiveness of these key legal frameworks.
