Non profit
Corporate sustainability: sharing the knowledge
Eurosif makes recommendations to the EC
Addressing sustainability through financial markets is no easy thing, but is undoubtedly what is increasingly being said to be needed in this day and age.
No one would agree more with this statement than Eurosif, the European Sustainable Investment forum, a not-for-profit entity based in Paris that represents assets totalling over €1 trillion through its membership.
It recently submitted a statement to the European Commission with suggestions on how to come to the establishment of a framework for a mandatory annual corporate disclosure on environmental, social and governance practices (ESG) in the European Union.
Collaborating with a number of European players in the field to facilitate implementation, Eurosif produced a report highlighting a number of recommendations from workshops which took place from last September to this February featuring a variety of stakeholders.
“The time has come to unite the efforts of the scattered and international European initiatives on ESG disclosure and reporting,” Eurosif stated in a press release.
With an aim to favour a combined approach to corporate reporting as one of the levers to embed sustainability and corporate strategy in management practices, Eurosif claimed to be aware of the new state of this approach, suggesting a rule-based as well as principle-based approach.
The group claims to be sensitive to different approaches and is recommending the creation of a high level working group composed of representatives of major stakeholders divided into companies, investors, civil society, media, trade unions and public administrations.
In recent years, with the rise of concerns along green and ethical lines, interest amongst individual investors as well as institutional ones have risen to make the right choices when it comes to making money.
Common benchmarking on companies across the board following a set criteria would provide a handle for investors in a similar way that credit rating agencies do to testify a firm’s financial reliability.
