Sustainable Business, Finance & Circular Economy

Company law and corporate governance is the core of the regulatory infrastructure of the dominant form for organising business: the company. This form is therefore what the course will concentrate on, after a brief introduction to the variety of business forms and their relevance in the course context.

There is an inherent tension in law’s focus on the legal form of the individual company as a creature of national law and the cross-border organisation of business through global value chains. In the EU, there is an increasing and unprecedented interest in discussing the regulation of business with several new initiatives being proposed and adopted in the 2020s.

Contributing to the debate on how to regulate companies, is also the international trend of lawsuits against European businesses for alleged harm in their global value chains, challenging established company law principles of limitation of liability.

The course will draw on extensive comparative company law and corporate governance research as a basis for analysing and discussing these developments in the EU.

Financial market law and bank regulation are key areas to shift finance towards sustainability. Informed by the emerging recognition of the financial risks of unsustainability, the EU’s Sustainable Finance Initiative of 2018 has opened up a previously much siloed field to sustainability analysis. The Initiative was quickly followed up through the adoption of several legislative instruments, including the Disclosure Regulation of 2019 and the Taxonomy Regulation of 2020.

The emphasis of this field is very much on environmental aspects of sustainability and especially climate, although it also does to some extent engage with social issues. The field has concentrated on financial market law and less on key aspects of banking, especially relevant for the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a part of the regulatory analysis is a number of complaints under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, as well as court cases, against investors and banks.

The course will present and analyse this field and its relevance for channelling private as well as public capital to sustainability and for governance changes towards sustainable business.

Circular economy is at the centre of the EU’s approach to moving away from linear and unsustainable modes of production and consumption and towards circular and sustainable business models. The EU’s 2015 and 2020 Circular Economy Packages emphasise holistic approaches, including product lifecycle perspective and improving the efficiency of production and waste management.

Also in this field, there has been much emphasis on environmental issues and very little on social issues. Further, there is much emphasis on increasing efficiency of production, and limiting the wasteful use of resources, while not so much on a broad approach to shifting towards sufficiency in material consumption. Through the 2020 Package, there is an increasing focus on broadening the sectorial scope and empowering private consumers as well as public procurers, which is followed up under the 2022 Sustainable Product Policy.

The course will analyse and discuss the current developments in Circular Economy policy and law and the extent to which they serve to integrate sustainability in European business.

By the end of this course, students will have:

• An understanding of a research-based concept of sustainability
• An overview of the multilevel regulatory framework intended to promote sustainability in international, EU and domestic laws and policies
• An overview of the EU law and policy basis for promoting sustainability and for policy coherence for sustainability in EU law
• A basic understanding of EU and European company law and corporate governance, finance and banking law, and circular economy law

The candidates will develop skills enabling them to:

• Carry out basic analyses of  EU laws and policies seeking to integrate sustainability into business, thereunder;
  • in the governance of companies, corporate groups and contractual global value chains
  • in finance, including regulation of investors and of banks
  • steps towards a circular economy, notably product regulation and consumer law
• Participate in discussions of developments more broadly within a variety of fields of law and policy through a sustainability lens
• Cooperate with other students and work in groups
• Demonstrate good oral and writing skills

The candidates will gain a basic understanding of interconnections, gaps and incoherencies in the sustainability-oriented regulatory framework that is developed through interactions between law, social norms, market forces, technological impacts and changes in the natural world.

This subject is taught at bachelor's level, but the lectures are joint with the master's level of the course.

Please note that lectures and curriculum for this course is aimed at students at master degree level.

However, the learning outcome is adjusted for students who take the subject at bachelor degree level.

This is a course with hybrid teaching, which implies online teaching for admitted Circle U. students who will receive a Zoom link to attend the lectures digitally only.

All lectures will be recorded and made available for all students of this course, barring any technical issues. The PowerPoint for each day will normally be shared beforehand.

This course has mandatory requirements.

All students must submit a blog-style essay of maximum 1000 words (approved/not approved), which may be on or related to the topics presented in the course room, to be submitted and assessed after the lectures. The essay may be submitted by individual students or a group of students (maximum five).

All students will have the opportunity to have their blog-style essay selected for further guidance towards a blog post on Blogging for Sustainability.