Tribune. If the new version of the European Directive on the communication of sustainability data (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD) was to be adopted by European legislators, it would require more than 50,000 large companies and listed companies in the European Union (EU) to publish information about their supply chain, their impacts on ecosystems, on the climate change, deforestation, local populations or their governance.
Two centuries ago, Europe invented and exported a capitalism of conquest in a world of resources which then appeared unlimited. The economic, social and now environmental issues have evolved, and it is in a multiple world, with scattered standards and strained resources, devoid of a real center and crossing borders, that business activity takes place.
International competition and its economic and legal rules have been overturned. The major economic players, companies and shareholders, are now calling for greater legal certainty, shared rules and access to reliable information essential for a long-term vision.
Information and transparency
Beyond the financial imperatives, the entire business environment has evolved, its role in society, its stakeholders, employees, consumers and NGOs who demand more and more information and transparency. The normative framework must therefore evolve to adapt to this new balance between the needs of the market economy, the necessary control of environmental externalities and the search for greater social justice, in particular towards the most vulnerable populations or deprived of the most basic rights.
The social role of companies, creators of wealth, providers of jobs but also vectors and to a large extent guardians of the sustainability of the economy in the long term, is fundamental; the EU must now assume its specificities in order to allow future international standards to integrate them.
This is why we, business leaders, support the proposed revision of the European directive on the publication of information on sustainability by companies, known as “CSRD”, which constitutes a new stage in the evolution of our economic model. The sustainability of our economic and legal model depends on it. We must maintain control of the rules that govern our trade, to maintain our standards and our legal, competitive, environmental and social values and not see them disappear or be absorbed into less favorable rule systems.
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