Tag: sustainability

Is the Retained EU Law Bill a Journey Into the Sunset for Company Law in the UK?

Posted on by foluke.adebisi

by Professor Charlotte Villiers, University of Bristol Law School

Brussels, Belgium, 2011

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (“the Bill”) is likely to have the reverse effect to what it aims to achieve: economic growth and business certainty (Explanatory Notes to the Bill) through clarification/simplification of UK law post-Brexit. There is lack of clarity, requiring lawyers and business advisers to search through layers of material to establish which “retained laws” are being targeted, the Retained EU Law Dashboard is not easy to navigate and nor does its list of relevant legislative instruments correspond to other official publications such as that of the House of Commons Library Briefing Paper, Legislating for Brexit: Statutory Instruments Implementing EU Law.  Moreover, the sunsetting deadlines for the targeted retained laws are likely to force the relevant departments to experience the dilemma of causing laws to expire without consulting the public fully, applying full Parliamentary scrutiny, or restating retained laws with inadequate resources to make such restatements sufficiently effective (Travers Smith: The Retained EU Law Bill: another Brexit cliff edge looms? October 2022). The resulting uncertainty that businesses will endure from this Bill and the regulatory gaps, at least in the short term, leave one wondering as to the value of the rush to legislate in this way. This blog focuses on the company law impacts as an example of the complexities and problems likely to arise, not just in the company law arena but in other important areas the development of which has been influenced significantly by European legislation, such as environment law. (more…)

‘Less is More’ in Non-Financial Reporting Initiatives

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Dr. Georgina Tsagas, Senior Lecturer in Law (Brunel University) and Prof Charlotte Villiers, Professor of Company Law (University of Bristol Law School).

In our paper we shed light on why ‘Less is More’ in the Non-Financial Reporting landscape and explain how an effective decluttering of the non-financial reporting landscape can take place by focusing on improving and widening the scope of the application of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive.


What is the root cause of the problem at hand?

Knowing ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’ is more than just a nice turn of phrase that Oscar Wilde had Lord Darlington quip in one of his plays. Projecting into the future, the phrase has spoken volumes on how modern society has drifted away from cultural values and has also highlighted society’s collective failure to place those values on a par with financial ones. Yet in the area of corporations’ non-financial reporting the problem remains that, although in the year 2020 we have reached a common ground on the fact that sustainability is a value worth preserving, there is no rate, no metric, no price nor cost attached to it, which arguably creates chaos for private and public actors alike. Not only do identified stakeholders face the negative consequences, but in both the short term and long term all actors involved and affected corporations, as well as society as a whole, will face the adverse effects of corporations’ unsustainable practices. The fact that sustainability cannot be accounted for in a consistent way is the essence of the problem. Assuming that the chaotic framework for non-financial reporting is part of the problem, we argue that fixing that framework must be part of the solution. (more…)

A Governance Revolution or Costly Distraction? Reassessing the promises of blockchain for public procurement governance

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Blockchain or, more generally, decentralised ledger technologies (DLTs), are capturing the attention of policymakers. ‘Blockchain’ has become shorthand to refer to technology usually identified with the properties of a decentralised, trustless and immutable (or at least, tamper-proof) mechanism for information verification and recording that can enable self-executing digital transactions between anonymous parties (‘smart contracts’).

Blockchain’s touted tamper-proofness and potential to enable smart contracts are driving initiatives that seek to create automated ‘trust in trustless environments’ for public sector use cases, in particular concerning activities highly-exposed to corruption risks and/or the automation of administrative procedures devoid of discretion.

There are high economic stakes at play in public procurement—which represents around 12% of GDP and over a third of public expenditure in OECD countries, and even higher proportions in other economies. Coupled with the growing (over)reliance of policymakers on business consultants, the hype around blockchain—and, more generally, about public procurement 4.0—is perhaps particularly intense in this field of GovTech and RegTech.

Some legal scholars are rather optimistically jumping on the ‘disruptive technologies bandwagon’ and identifying blockchain as a main tool to increase the probity and efficiency of procurement governance at a national level.1 Some officially-backed ‘visions for the future’ go as far as promising blockchain-supported global e-procurement platforms capable of covering the entirety of procurement transactions carried out worldwide.

This is creating a set of expectations about how blockchain will revolutionise public procurement governance that does not translate into real action. Even further, I submit, blockchain is and will remain structurally inapt to generate such a governance revolution, for several reasons. (more…)

AI & sustainable procurement: the public sector should first learn what it already owns

Posted on by lee.mcconnell

By Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Photo credit: Flickr

While carrying out research on the impact of digital technologies for public procurement governance, I have realised that the deployment of artificial intelligence to promote sustainability through public procurement holds some promise. There are many ways in which machine learning can contribute to enhance procurement sustainability.

For example, new analytics applied to open transport data can significantly improve procurement planning to support more sustainable urban mobility strategies, as well as the emergence of new models for the procurement of mobility as a service (MaaS).* Machine learning can also be used to improve the logistics of public sector supply chains, as well as unlock new models of public ownership of eg cars. It can also support public buyers in identifying the green or sustainable public procurement criteria that will deliver the biggest improvements measured against any chosen key performance indicator, such as CO2 footprint, as well as support the development of robust methodologies for life-cycle costing.

However, it is also evident that artificial intelligence can only be effectively deployed where the public sector has an adequate data architecture.** While advances in electronic procurement and digital contract registers are capable of generating that data architecture for the future, there is a significant problem concerning the digitalisation of information on the outcomes of past procurement exercises and the current stock of assets owned and used by the public sector. In this blog, I want to raise awareness about this gap in public sector information and to advocate for the public sector to invest in learning what it already owns as a potential major contribution to sustainability in procurement, in particular given the catalyst effect this could have for a more circular procurement economy. (more…)

Food as a Commons: why Law Matters?

Posted on by legalresearch

By Dr Tomaso Ferrando, Lecturer in Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Since Hardin’s publication of the Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, the perception of ‘the commons’ has been closely intertwined with food and agricultural production. As a matter of fact, Hardin was worried that common land which was openly and unrestrictedly accessible to livestock would have been quickly impoverished and eventually lost its economic potential. According to Hardin, livestock production should take place on the basis of a well-defined and individualist proprietary regime which allocates the land to all users, so that the cost of idiosyncrasy and over-exploitation is borne by those who act irresponsibly and negative externalities do not affect the amount of resource that is available to the other members of society.

Through the years, the flaws and ineffectiveness of Hardin’s theory have been uncovered. For example, David Harvey has suggested that Hardin only considers the implication of commons-owned land (the natural resource), while the crucial element is represented by the commons-ownership of the means of production. Similarly, the research conducted by Elinor Olstrom through the lenses of economics and governance led to the identification of several examples in the natural world where commons-pooled resources are maintained, reproduced and shared by members of society through the introduction of rigorous forms of governance and collective discipline. Moreover, the idea that private titling and private exploitation of resources reduce the risk of over-consumption and unsustainability has been proven wrong in numerous cases of socio-environmental disasters and by the depletion of soil produced by corporate farming. (more…)

North-South Free Trade Agreements – Trade, Policy and Europe

Posted on by legalresearch

By Dr Clair Gammage, Lecturer in Law, and Prof Tonia Novitz, Professor of Labour Law (University of Bristol Law School).

On 4 October 2017, we held an event at the University of Bristol Law School, funded by PolicyBristol, considering the dynamics of negotiation, implementation, and enforcement of North-South trade agreements.

The first panel (Clair Gammage, Maria Garcia and Tonia Novitz, chaired by Phil Syrpis) examined the external policies of the European Union (EU) particularly in the context of regionalism and free trade agreements (FTAs). The significance of power disparities between trading partners in the negotiation process was considered and it was argued that true ‘partnerships’ in trade will be established through an inclusive and participative approach, as advocated by Clair Gammage in her book on North-South Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes (Edward Elgar, 2017).

The second panel (Emily Jones, Sophie Hardefeldt and Gabriel Siles-Brügge, chaired by Tonia Novitz) examined how the UK could – in the event of Brexit – depart from or improve on the practices of the EU. Issues regarding human rights protections, development and transparency were considered, echoing many of the themes emerging from the discussion of the first panel. (more…)