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Commissioner Barnier has recently been quoted as seeking to promote a "shareholder spring” across the EU. Despite the apparent flippancy of these remarks there are signs that EU policies on corporate governance and the current voluntary or privatised approach to "regulating" corporate social responsibility (CSR) are beginning to overlap in interesting ways.
There has been a particular revised emphasis on the role of long-term responsible investing in engendering a new “post-crisis” form of corporate responsibility, and the reassertion of a need for sustainable business models is highlighted by the headline programme, 'Teaming up with investors to drive the transition to a sustainable economy' - launched by European Commission Vice-President, Antonio Tajani.
Such developments should be of serious strategic interest to business, particularly in the investment management community, if the notion of corporate governance starts to cover some aspects of CSR traditionally seen as being voluntary and self-regulatory in nature. We may be seeing the evolution of a broader approach by the Commission using a wider mixture of policy tools to promote a new form of corporate responsibility.
Dr Ian Williams, June 2012
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