Pérez-Llorca presents its book "Legal Studies on Sustainability: Climate Change and ESG Criteria in Spain and the European Union"  

Pérez-Llorca has hosted the presentation of its book "Legal Studies on Sustainability: Climate Change and ESG Criteria in Spain and the European Union", in an act joined by Alberto de Gregorio, Director of the Legal Service of the Council of the European Union, and Santiago Martínez Garrido, General Secretary and Secretary of the Board of Directors of Iberdrola, as well as Sonsoles Centeno and José María de Paz, partners of Pérez-Llorca.

The publication offers a transversal vision of the main legal issues related to the regulation on sustainability that is being developed by the European Union. It is the first book published in Spain on this subject and it has been edited entirely by professionals from Pérez-Llorca.

The work analyzes the main issues related to the new regulatory corpus on sustainability that the European Union is developing within the framework of the European Green Pact, from the perspective of the company, and from a transversal legal perspective. It offers an overview of the European policy to combat climate change, which affects all economic sectors and all legal specialties, and it examines some of the most relevant issues raised by this new reality.

Pedro Pérez-Llorca, Managing Partner of the Firm, opened the event and pointed out that "this work was born with a double objective: on the one hand, we seek to contribute to the competitiveness of our companies in an economic environment in which the implementation of ESG criteria will constitute a key element for attracting investment, and on the other, we pursue the objective of the Firm to contribute to the construction of a culture of knowledge through the construction and dissemination of Law".
 
Alberto de Gregorio, Director of the Legal Service of the Council at the European Union, stressed that "we must welcome this work, which explores, among many others, the value of solidifying -through a rigorous and comprehensive study- the notion of sustainability, a notion that often lends itself to loose and imprecise usage. The regulation of sustainable development is part of a new paradigm of European Union law, and it responds to the multiple crises that it has suffered in recent years, including the climate emergency. The importance of what is sustainable lies in the transversal nature that the treaties themselves attribute to it: it is not a sectoral policy, but a common value called upon to penetrate all Union policies".

Santiago Martínez Garrido, General Secretary and Secretary of the Board of Directors at Iberdrola, indicated that "the promotion of the Rule of Law must take shape through soft law instruments, which allow the establishment of a true "sustainable climate governance" where companies are the drivers of a necessary and essential change to achieve neutrality in carbon emissions. Complying with what the law prescribes is not just good corporate governance, it must go further, voluntarily assuming additional commitments to those that are strictly obligatory".
Sonsoles Centeno, Partner of European Union Law and Competition at Pérez-Llorca and Managing Partner of the Firm’s Brussels office, stressed that "with its new regulation on "sustainability" the European Union is changing the European economic and social model. As of today, the fight against climate change is no longer just a project, but a reality with specific obligations for companies, one that economic operators cannot ignore, neither in the short nor in the long term, since there is no sector that stays out of this change.

The event culminated with the intervention of ESG Criteria and Climate Change Regulation Partner  José María de Paz, director of this work, who stressed that the book "does not intend to assess the European sustainability policy, but has been crafted in order to carry out an analysis to provide the legal tools that serve to understand this new regulation. In the book, we analyze the main issues raised by the two legal principles located at the center of this new regulation: transparency (European Taxonomy Regulation, SFDR Regulation and Directive on Sustainability Information, among others) and due diligence (Proposed Directive of Due Diligence and Directive on Sustainability Information). Likewise, we address the impact that climate change and ESG criteria may have in other areas such as data protection, actions to claim damages, insurance, company acquisitions or competition law".