Normes d’encadrement | Page 9

Drôle de réflexion que propose le professeur Armand Hatchuel, mais ô combien intéressante ! « La « raison d’être » des entreprises à l’épreuve de la guerre en Ukraine » (Le Monde, 22 mars 2022).

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Inscrite dans le droit par la loi Pacte (Plan d’action pour la croissance et la transformation des entreprises) de 2019, la « raison d’être » d’une entreprise stipule « les principes dont la société se dote et pour le respect desquels elle entend affecter des moyens dans la réalisation de son activité » (article 1835 du code civil). Conçue en temps de paix, cette disposition permet aux entreprises de préciser leurs engagements sociaux et environnementaux, mais peut-elle aussi éclairer les décisions difficiles à prendre en situation de conflit armé ?

Les guerres posent aux entreprises des dilemmes de plusieurs types. Les plus connus sont ceux qui émergent lors des périodes d’occupation. Sous la botte nazie, fallait-il se saborder ou continuer à produire ? En poursuivant l’activité, l’intérêt des actionnaires rejoignait celui de l’occupant, mais la préservation de l’appareil de production préparait aussi le futur de la nation libérée.

En revanche, sauf réquisition, la raison d’être devrait exclure de servir l’appareil militaire de l’occupant, car de telles collaborations ont conduit à disqualifier de nombreuses entreprises après la Libération.

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Drôle de tribune qu’offre Francis Vaille dans La Presse : « Comment faire confiance aux entreprises ». Cette tribune interpelle le lecteur sur le contenu de l’information non financière et ses conséquences sur la réalité de la divulgation des entreprises en matière de GES.

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Pour l’instant, certaines entreprises en Bourse publient des renseignements sur leurs émissions de GES par million de dollars de valeur ou de revenus de façon volontaire. Elles se basent notamment sur les travaux menés par le groupe de travail sur les informations financières liées au climat (TCFD).

Les normes demeurent toutefois imprécises et incomplètes. Elles incorporent souvent les émissions de premier et de deuxième niveau – celles faites par l’entreprise elle-même –, mais pas celles de leurs fournisseurs. La norme ISSB proposera une norme commune par industrie pour les trois niveaux.

Et d’ici peu, les autorités des valeurs mobilières rendront la publication obligatoire. 

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Je vous invite à regarder cette capsule-vidéo de Mme Charlotte Michon sur le devoir de vigilance. Elle revient sur le projet de directive sur le devoir de vigilance de la Commission européenne et le rapport de la mission d’information parlementaire d’évaluation de la loi française, tous deux publiés le 23 février 2022.

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Bel article de réflexion offert par Beate Sjåfjell et Jukka Mähönen (professeurs à Oslo) sur la directive vigilance : « Corporate Purpose and the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Proposal » (Oxford Business Law Blog, 25 février 2022).

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Taking sustainability seriously: sustainable value creation within planetary boundaries

The question of how to secure the contribution of our businesses to the fundamental transformation to sustainability is not one that should be responded to in the ideological and emotional way as we have seen in some of the responses when the Sustainable Corporate Governance initiative was launched. Now that the Directive proposal is out, we encourage all who wish to participate in the discussion to lay aside any ideological ‘shareholder vs stakeholders’ viewpoints. That is not what is at stake. While the IPCC report on climate change of 2021 has been referred to as ‘code red for humanity’, planetary boundaries research shows that reality is even more grim – we have a whole set of code reds for humanity and they are increasing in number (as the latest planetary boundaries research shows), and the status for the European Union is not good. Working towards sustainability also entails questions of social justice – just as we cannot silo environmental issues into various categories to be dealt with separately, we cannot separate environmental and social issues. These are all interconnected elements. All of these issues must be dealt with simultaneously. The sustainability challenges of our time are complex and interconnected and attempting to silo sustainability work into dealing piecemeal with isolated elements will not work.

While there seems generally to be an increasing consensus among governments and businesses on the need to integrate sustainability into the governance of our globalized businesses, the attempts to do this so far seem to have been based on three principles: a) as few clear and enforceable rules as possible, b) support voluntary measures although they haven’t worked  so far, and c) if we must regulate, be sure to leave company law out of the picture.

However, to get real about integrating sustainability, we need to go to company law, which is the regulatory infrastructure for decision-making in business. As all company law scholars who have analysed the sources know, company law gives a broad discretion to corporate boards and by extension senior management in their corporate governance. There is, in other words, space within the current company law and corporate governance systems to steer businesses in more sustainable directions. This has been used by some as an argument for the sanctity of company law – no need for change, move on, nothing to see here! The problem is that this discretionary space is taken up by the social norm of shareholder primacy. We therefore suggest, on the basis of over a decade of multijurisdictional comparative analyses of the drivers for and the barriers to sustainable business, that company law must take back that space and clarify why we have companies (corporate purpose) and give a principle-based instruction to boards on how to do their jobs in this era that is defined by the extreme unsustainabilities resulting from business as usual.

Sustainable value creation is already an emerging concept in corporate governance all over the world. What needs to be done is to position sustainable value creation within the ecological limits of our planet. We therefore propose both ‘sustainable value’ and ‘planetary boundaries’ as general clauses in company law, the content of which gradually can be firmed up as practice develops. This doesn’t mean we don’t think there should be any guidance in the law – quite the opposite, as we see the need to ensure that business does not take these two concepts and turn them into opportunities for greenwashing, bluewashing or ‘sustainability washing’.  Integrating these concepts into the duties of the board is therefore also paramount, outlining this in a way that provides legal certainty.

Avoiding the shareholder vs stakeholder trap does not mean that we do not in our proposal encompass a wide variety of interests affected by the company’s business. However, while involving affected communities, trade unions, and civil society is crucial, a mere canvassing of ‘stakeholder interests’ and giving priority to the ones that make themselves heard the most is insufficient, misleading and potentially destructive for the overarching purpose of sustainable value creation. The backdrop must always be the interconnected complexities and the vulnerability of the often-unrepresented groups (whether invisible workers deep in the global value chains, Indigenous communities, or future generations), and the aim of a sustainable future within planetary boundaries.

Under pressure: the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive

The European Commission’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive proposal, presented on 23 February 2022, aims to put into place mandatory and harmonised sustainability due diligence rules in the European Economic Area, in recognition of the insufficiency of voluntary action by business and the regulatory chaos that business faces in its cross-border activities.

The proposed Directive is appropriately named ‘Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence’, resonating in title with the proposed Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It is positive that the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive proposal clarifies which environmental and human rights issues are intended to be included. However, a broader approach is needed, drawing on a research-based concept of sustainable value creation within planetary boundaries.

The proposal builds on a due diligence duty for the members of the board and the chief executive officer of the company. It reflects the international human rights and environmental international law obligations and concretises the steps of the due diligence process. There is, however, a danger of box ticking instead of principle-based evaluations of risks of unsustainability.

There are proposals for both public and private enforcement, including civil liability for the board members and the chief executive officer, which makes this proposal different from much of what we have otherwise seen in the corporate sustainability area. The scope of the proposal is however extremely narrow, excluding in its direct application all small and medium-sized enterprises, and covering only some 13,000 EU companies and some 4,000 third-country companies.

The proposal takes an important core company law step, which we have advocated in our work, namely to clarify that the duty of the board (strangely formulated as a duty, in Anglo-Saxon speak, for all ‘directors’) is to promote the interests of the company. Wisely, there is no attempt to harmonize this (and especially not by including some kind of stakeholder language), rather leaving the content of the interests of the company to the variety of company law regimes in Europe. What is missing, however, is further situating this duty within an overarching purpose of sustainable value creation within planetary boundaries, which would have given a clearer sustainability-oriented framing for the whole proposal. 

The proposal does employ misleading stakeholder language in the consultation duties as part of due diligence, where it would have been better to specify that the consultation should take place with affected communities, groups and people.

The proposed Directive is clearly a product of the tension resulting from, on the one hand, the social norm of shareholder primacy and the drive to keep company law untouched by sustainability issues, and on the other hand, the willingness to make necessary changes to mitigate the extreme unsustainabilities of business as usual. We see this in the way core company law issues are relegated to the end of the proposal. It would have been much more logical to set out clearly in the beginning of the proposed Directive the core duties of the boards to ensure that sustainability due diligence is used as a key tool for integrating sustainability into the entire business of the company.

The Directive proposal needs to be strengthened on a number of points, and it is now to be discussed further by the European Parliament and the Council, before it can be adopted with possible revisions. We strongly recommend that subsequent work with the Directive proposal be based on a research-based concept of sustainability and take company law and corporate governance seriously, rather than allowing the misleading shareholder vs stakeholder dichotomy to set the parameters for continued siloing of core company law as the regulatory infrastructure for corporate decision-making.

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L’Honorable Sénatrice Rosa Galvezdes livre une belle tribune dans Le Soleil (« Pour un secteur financier aligné sur le climat », 25 mars 2022) où elle revient sur le projet de loi qu’elle propose : projet de loi S-243, Loi édictant la Loi sur la finance alignée sur le climat et apportant des modifications connexes à d’autres lois.

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La Loi sur la finance alignée sur le climat

C’est pourquoi j’ai déposé en chambre du Sénat cette semaine un projet de loi ambitieux — la Loi sur la finance alignée sur le climat — conçu pour guider, de manière ordonnée, le secteur financier dans sa transition vers la décarbonisation.

Nos recherches démontrent que la mise en œuvre de politiques bien conçues peut minimiser le coût de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre, générer du financement essentiel pour les énergies propres et renouvelables et contribuer à des efforts plus larges de développement durable. Les multiples avantages d’un financement aligné sur le climat justifient non seulement d’intégrer les meilleures pratiques internationales dans les politiques canadiennes, mais aussi de les propulser par une législation de référence audacieuse.

La proposition législative se veut être un exercice de cohérence, de transparence et de reddition de comptes qui représente une progression naturelle de la loi sur la carboneutralité adoptée par le parlement canadien en 2021. Le gouvernement s’est doté d’un cadre de responsabilité pour atteindre la carboneutralité d’ici 2050; il faut maintenant que la société entière s’aligne sur cet engagement, y compris le secteur financier qui, malencontreusement, alimente davantage les changements climatiques par des investissements massifs dans les combustibles fossiles.

Des mesures adéquates pour la transition

Il ne faut pas s’en cacher : la transition vers une économie à émissions nettes zéro, quoique nécessaire pour conserver une vie saine sur Terre, ne sera pas simple ni facile. Cependant, le coût d’une transition juste, mesurée et ordonnée est très avantageux face aux coûts incalculables de l’inaction.

Pour faciliter cette transition chez le secteur financier, la nouvelle loi, entre autres, requerrait des institutions financières et des sociétés d’État l’élaboration de plans d’actions et de cibles; établirait un devoir d’alignement sur les engagements climatiques pour les directeurs et administrateurs d’entités; obligerait à nommer une personne ayant une expertise climatique au sein de certains conseils d’administration; et établirait une exigence de suffisance de capital proportionnelle aux risques climatiques générés par les institutions financières.

• Pour en savoir plus sur ce projet de loi : ici

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