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.
After three months of rushed decision-making, the European Commission presented its Omnibus Simplification Package and proposed major rollbacks to the EU’s corporate sustainability legislation, threatening to undermine Europe's leadership in sustainable business practices and ESG reporting.
With the latest leaks, it is becoming clearer and clearer that President Ursula von der Leyen and Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis are willing to sacrifice the very foundations of the EU’s ESG legislation all whilst bypassing the due legislative process.
The expert group Frank Bold, along with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, has submitted a complaint to the European Commission regarding the actions of Czech authorities in setting emission limits for the Počerady coal power plant. In August 2024, a court revoked the plant's extensive emission limits derogation, and authorities were required to immediately reflect this decision in its operating permit. However, this has not yet happened. As a result, the power plant is currently violating the legal limit for mercury emissions. The complainants are calling on the Commission to investigate whether the Czech Republic’s approach to Počerady is in breach of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive (IED).
