Browsing by Subject "human rights due diligence"

To align with the goals of the Paris Agreement, the EU has taken proactive measures, including the implementation of the Taxonomy Regulation (EU) 2020/852, which establishes standardized definitions for sustainable economic activities and mandates annual reporting by companies within its scope. This master's thesis delves into an investigation of Finnish companies' 2022 EU Taxonomy reporting, with a specific focus on a critical aspect of the EU Taxonomy known as Minimum Safeguards (“MS”). The MS necessitate companies to meet specific performance criteria in the realms of certain social and governance aspects, including having an adequate human rights due diligence (“HRDD”) process. The thesis does this by addressing two primary research questions: 1) How do Finnish stock-listed companies report about their MS alignment in their reporting for the financial year 2022? and 2) For those companies who claim to meet the MS, does their actual performance on MS, particularly in the area of HRDD, align with their reporting? The research involved an analysis of the 2022 EU Taxonomy disclosures made by the 30 largest stock-listed non-financial companies headquartered in Finland. In addition, for those companies claiming compliance with the MS, their human rights reporting was evaluated using the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark's Core UNGP Indicators methodology, following the guidance provided by the European Platform on Sustainable Finance in their Final Report on MS in October 2022. Based on this thesis, a substantial portion (20/30) of the analysed companies claimed they meet the MS. Among the rest, only three explicitly acknowledged non-compliance, while others took a more ambiguous approach, refraining from explicitly admitting non-compliance. As for the second research question, the results suggest that a significant number of the companies claiming compliance may not entirely meet the human rights standards outlined in the Final Report on MS, with only two companies clearly meeting these standards, and an additional five potentially meeting them, subject to further verification. This raises concerns about the accuracy of sustainability claims in these companies' EU Taxonomy disclosures and questions the effectiveness of current disclosure practices on EU Taxonomy. The findings may prove useful to companies seeking to enhance the quality of their sustainability reporting and prepare for forthcoming due diligence laws.