The EU has in its Action Plan for sustainable finance, Action 10, indicated that it sees a role for legislative intervention in the rules concerning corporate boards. As a matter of company law, the corporate board has a crucial role in determining the strategy and the direction of the undertaking, and supervising how this plays out. As also the European Commission has observed earlier, boards have a ‘vital part to play in the development of responsible companies’. The EU Green Deal’s ambition that ‘sustainability should be further embedded into the corporate governance framework’, is followed up most recently in its Sustainable Corporate Governance initiative. In this initiative, the environmental and notably climate change focus of the Sustainable Finance Initiative is merged with the push for mandatory human rights due diligence, informed by the UN Guiding Principles, supported by the European Parliament and a range of national legislative initiatives. The legislative proposal is expected in the second quarter of 2021.
Reforming company law and corporate governance has been a key issue in the SMART reform proposals, and therefore a topic that the Oslo Company Law Group is following up closely. Scholars in the Company Law Group are therefore preparing a response to the European Commission’s consultation on Sustainable Corporate Governance, with a deadline of 8 February 2021. The aim of this lunch seminar, led by Beate Sjåfjell, is to stimulate discussion and prepare the ground for response to the consultation.
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