Encouraging Institutional Shareholders to Undertake Double-Materiality-Minded Engagement Practices Through Regulation - Much to Do and Lots to Consider

Savva, Rafael (2024) Encouraging Institutional Shareholders to Undertake Double-Materiality-Minded Engagement Practices Through Regulation - Much to Do and Lots to Consider. InterEULawEast : journal for the international and european law, economics and market integrations, 11 (2). ISSN 1849-4439 (In Press)

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Abstract

The European Commission’s announcement of the EU stewardship and engagement practices frameworks’ review in its 2021 Sustainable Finance Strategy suggests that it likely longs to see double materiality permeating engagement practices; and that it may be planning to instrumentalise the law to stimulate their undertaking analogously. This Article argues that the Commission should recommend reforming the law from the frameworks regulating institutional shareholders for their engagement practices if it aspires this law to steer them towards governing and undertaking “double-materiality-minded engagement practices”. For institutional shareholders to do the former, the effect of several factors on their treatment of engagement practices and the challenges involved with governing and undertaking double-materiality-minded engagement practices must be mitigated and overcome. The efficacy of this law in helping to address these as it interacts with key EU sectoral laws lies in facilitating market-led regulation about them. However, such market-led regulation will not enable the governance and undertaking of double-materiality-minded engagement practices without changing the structures guiding institutional shareholders’ treatment of engagement practices and the legal imperative for it. Care, though, should be exercised in reforming the law, for the reform must be comprehensive and mindful of the issues mentioned. In light of this, the Article proposes introducing forward-looking rules centred on stewardship teams and regulatory tools allowing experimentation with double-materiality-minded engagement practices.