Until recently, ESG was merely regarded as a marketing tool. Policymakers are now taking a stronger interest in ESG-related issues, with the EU taking the ESG regulatory lead globally.
Influenced by evolving societal trends and increasingly detailed European regulations, national lawmakers are catching up and building a regulatory framework governing environmental, social and governance operations, thus creating new binding obligations for businesses at a national level.
Only a few remaining countries in the European Union are now left without binding regulations addressing topics such as gender equality, remuneration, harassment, sustainable mobility, or whistleblowers’ protection. Moreover, increased transparency requirements often complement legal obligations in these areas, with many national legislations now mandating the regular production by companies of reports or indexes on specific ESG topics.
ESG has also become a strategic focus of particular interest to investors: as companies are required to meet growing transparency demands regarding their social and environmental practices, ESG has consequently become a central element of corporate strategy.
In this brochure, you will receive an overview on the most relevant ESG-related topics from an employment law perspective for each of the ELLINT Next countries. As we identified the topics genderequality, mobility, reporting obligations and whistleblowers’ protection as the most regulated fields of ESG, the overview is focussed on these aspects.
The focus of the brochure is on two main topics:
– Regulations relating to gender-equality/ antidiscrimination (including pay transparency), mobility, reporting obligations, or whistleblowing in each country.
– Concrete measures or approaches can or should a company take to comply with EU -ESG Standards.
If you would like more information on ESG regulations and best practices in specific jurisdictions, or if you have questions about other aspects of employment law, the members of ELLINT may provide their expertise
and personalized support. Please feel free to contact one of our firms using the details provided for each country at the end of the brochure.
