Robert G. Eccles is a Visiting Professor of Management Practice at Saïd Business School; Richard Gardiner is EU Public Policy Lead, and Andrea Webster is Financial System Transformation Lead at World Benchmarking Alliance. This post was prepared for the Forum by Professor Eccles, Mr. Gardiner, and Ms. Webster.
There was no shortage of disappointment and discourse from all sides during the recent negotiations on the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Opinions were plentiful, diverse, passionate, and the gloves certainly came off in the final round.
The debate played out amongst ourselves, where on February 5, 2024 one of us (Eccles, a Democrat) waded into the debate with a piece with Dan Crowley (his Republican friend) taking a critical view of CSDDD. It received a number or comments when it was posted on LinkedIn; far more negative ones than positive. Another one of us (Webster, a good friend of Bob’s) bitingly wrote that ‘I think you can do better than this” and “your comment about extraterritorial reach into the US made me snort my cup of tea…the irony.”