THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU COMPANY LAW PROVISIONS PROTECTING WHO, WHAT AND HOW?

The stakeholder-oriented nature of EU company law can be observed in the case of public or private limited liability companies. In the case of the former, protection of shareholders also comes in the forefront and it can be found through the information model legislation, demanding all relevant information to be presented to the shareholders, on the basis of which the shareholders take on the responsibility for their decisions. This shift of responsibility for protection from legislative provisions in the hands of company law actors can be also observed in the case of provisions addressed to creditors , albeit in limited form. The interplay of the two legislative approaches - information based Anglo-American approach and (minimum) harmonization Continental approach can be seen throughout the body of EU company law, including CJEU case law, but the use of one or another does not always depend on the EU legislative policy. The lack of harmonization of some basic company law principles across the national laws of Member States contributes to these shifts of legislative approaches and it does not always coherently follow the aims and goals of EU legislature concerning the internal market and international competitiveness of European businesses. In particular, competitiveness that is based on comparative advantages and not merely on size is at the present moment not promoted at the EU level. A company that focuses on internal growth and decides to change its legal form to public limited liability company faces a vast shift in applicable EU company law provisions that entail high costs, not providing a visible initiative for businesses to undertake such path. A shift in policy considerations would be advisable to achieve the goal that arose in the last decades at the EU level: since internal market is today insured, international competitiveness is next on the agenda and the same policy considerations as they were provided in the 1950s cannot hold today in the changed circumstances

THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU COMPANY LAW PROVISIONS PROTECTING WHO, WHAT AND HOW?

The stakeholder-oriented nature of EU company law can be observed in the case of public or private limited liability companies. In the case of the former, protection of shareholders also comes in the forefront and it can be found through the information model legislation, demanding all relevant information to be presented to the shareholders, on the basis of which the shareholders take on the responsibility for their decisions. This shift of responsibility for protection from legislative provisions in the hands of company law actors can be also observed in the case of provisions addressed to creditors , albeit in limited form. The interplay of the two legislative approaches - information based Anglo-American approach and (minimum) harmonization Continental approach can be seen throughout the body of EU company law, including CJEU case law, but the use of one or another does not always depend on the EU legislative policy. The lack of harmonization of some basic company law principles across the national laws of Member States contributes to these shifts of legislative approaches and it does not always coherently follow the aims and goals of EU legislature concerning the internal market and international competitiveness of European businesses. In particular, competitiveness that is based on comparative advantages and not merely on size is at the present moment not promoted at the EU level. A company that focuses on internal growth and decides to change its legal form to public limited liability company faces a vast shift in applicable EU company law provisions that entail high costs, not providing a visible initiative for businesses to undertake such path. A shift in policy considerations would be advisable to achieve the goal that arose in the last decades at the EU level: since internal market is today insured, international competitiveness is next on the agenda and the same policy considerations as they were provided in the 1950s cannot hold today in the changed circumstances

Responding to the need of postgraduate education for Planetary Health : Development of an online Master's Degree

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MAltres ajuts: CERCA Programme/Generalitat de CatalunyaPlanetary Health has emerged as a new approach to respond to the existential risks that the clime and global environmental crises pose to human societies. As stated by various stakeholders, the challenges involved in Planetary Health are of such magnitude that education must be at the forefront to obtain a meaningful response. Universities and higher education institutions have been specifically called to embed the concept of planetary stewardship in all curricula and train the next generation of researchers and change makers as a matter of urgency. As a response to this call, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) developed the first online and asynchronous Master in Science (MSc) in Planetary Health. The aim of the programme is to train a new generation of academics and professionals who understand the challenges of Planetary Health and have tools to tackle them. This article describes the development of the curriculum of this MSc, presents the main characteristics of the programme and discusses some of the challenges encountered in the development of the programme and its implementation. The design of this MSc was based on: the alignment of the programme with the principles for Planetary Health education with a focus on human health; a multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary approach; the urgency to respond to the Anthropocene challenges; and the commitment to the 2030 Agenda. The MSc was recognized as an official degree by the Agency for Quality of the Catalan University System, included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education, and the Spanish National Academic Coordination body in April 2021 and launched in October 2021. There are currently more than 50 students enrolled in the program coming from a broad range of disciplines and geographic locations. The information presented in this article and the discussion on challenges encountered in developing and implementing the programme can be useful for those working in the development of similar programs

Sustainable public procurement best practices at sub-national level: drivers of strategic public procurement practices in Catalonia and Barcelona

The strategic use of public procurement across the European Union to contribute to sustainable development has been underdeveloped and unequally distributed among the EU Member States, with seven Member States being sustainable public procurement leaders, and the rest of the Member States having a very modest sustainable public procurement uptake. While Spain has not been one of the best performers, the outstanding Catalan performance as a Spanish autonomous community calls for the analysis of the driving factors that enabled a high sustainable public procurement uptake at the regional and local level. The present article explores the policy coherence, the accompanying legal framework and the supporting activities that have been carried out in Catalonia to incorporate green public procurement as the default procurement option at the regional and local level to serve as a potential model for a transition towards green public procurement for other regional and local procurement authorities.The research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789461 (SCOM Project – Sustainable Company)

[Review of:] Market manipulation and insider trading

The research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789461 (SCOM Project - Sustainable Company

More than a nudge?: arguments and tools for mandating green public procurement in the EU

The present research paper analyses the EU general and mandatory sectoral legal framework on public procurement, arguing for its inhibiting effect on the EU-wide uptake of green public procurement. It explores de jure and de facto barriers to green public procurement, motivated by the need for a change in the business world towards more sustainable practices through preferably mandatory legal changes of EU corporate law. As the public procurement represents a strong nudge for a qualitative change in private market demand, accounting for a minimum of 12% of the national gross domestic product, it should become environmentally sustainable itself and guide markets through the qualitative and quantitative changes on the demand side. Given the complexity of the current legal framework and the novelty of the approach to public procurement as a strategic tool for the achievement of sustainable production and consumption, a better defined and clear legislative approach is called for, possibly in a mandatory form, clarifying the obligation of public procurers to account for sustainability in their practices, especially as regards incorporating environmental concerns in their purchasing activities. In its current form, the EU legislative public procurement framework entails a seemingly permissive attitude towards green public procurement, hampered in practice by the existing legal institutes in the field, which hamper the strategic use of public procurement and thereby its influence on sustainability on the private markets.This research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789461 (SCOM Project—Sustainable Company)

The impact of e-procurement on institutional quality

We examine the contribution of e-procurement to the institutional quality. To this end, we exploit the early adoption of large-scale e-procurement platforms in three EU countries to consistently estimate the effect of procurement policy change on the institutional quality. Our identification strategy relies on the institutional quality trends similarity between early-adopting countries and the rest of the world and uses a battery of covariates to match the treated and control group to parse out the level of early-adopters’ institutional quality had the e-procurement not been implemented. Drawing on a large sample of 108 countries for the period 1996-2017, our synthetic control and difference-in-differences estimates indicate significant improvements in public sector efficiency and rule of law in the countries with a high-level of pre-reform institutional quality and a pervasive deterioration in the ability to control corruption and quality of regulation in the setting with lower pre-reform institutional quality. The estimated effects of adopting e-procurement on institutional quality are robust to a number of specification checks, treatment sensitivity analyses and donor sample selection issues.The research was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789461 (SCOM project – sustainable company)

Does e-procurement matter for economic growth?

We examine the impact of e-procurement on economic growth. To this end, we exploit an ambitious implementation of large-scale mandatory e-procurement platform in New South Wales and Western Australia. By matching pre-reform growth dynamics and its covariates with the rest of Australia and the world, we provide a plausible source of variation in growth that allows us to build a counterfactual growth scenario in the hypothetical absence of the reform. Using a donor pool of other Australian states and a pool of more than 100 countries in country-state matched balanced sample, our evidence highlights a mixed impact of mandatory e-procurement on growth. We find that the institutional quality of governance and policy implementation underlines the magnitude of the growth effect. In particular, our findings contrast a significant positive impact of the mandatory e-procurement on the economic growth of Western Australia with a zero impact of the similar reform in New South Wales. We argue that this contrast arises from the differences in transaction costs, quality of governance, and strength of regulatory oversight that either foster or hamper the opportunities for corruption. The estimated impact of reform is robust across a multitude of spatial and temporal placebo checks, choice of samples and does not seem to be driven by pre-existing shocks or prevalent economic conditions

Bono malum superate

We examine the effect radical institutional change on long-run growth through the case of the partition of Friuli Venezia Giulia in 1947 between Italy and Yugoslavia and the subsequent integration in two distinct institutional regimes. Friuli Venezia Giulia\u27s long-run development trajectory is matched through a novel dataset with other countries on pre-1947 growth and development characteristics, producing a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the absence of the unification. By using the long- run growth and development paths of other countries for the period 1871-2016, we construct a plausible counterfactual scenario, showing pervasive and substantial long-run growth benefits of Italian unification. In the absence of unification, Friuli Venezia Giulia\u27s per capita income would be 41 percent lower and Yugoslav-controlled Littoral would have 32 percent higher per capita income if it had joined Italy. A battery of large- sample placebo distributions and permutation tests confirm the significance of the 1947 border partition for long-run economic growth

The planetary wellbeing initiative: pursuing the sustainable development goals in higher education

We live in a time of pressing planetary challenges, many of which threaten catastrophic change to the natural environment and require massive and novel coordinated scientific and societal efforts on an unprecedented scale. Universities and other academic institutions have the opportunity and responsibility to assume a leading role in an era when the destiny of the planet is precisely in the hands of human beings. Drawing on the Planetary Health project promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet, Pompeu Fabra University launched in 2018 the Planetary Wellbeing Initiative, a long-term institutional strategy also animated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Planetary Wellbeing might be defined as the highest attainable standard of wellbeing for human and non-human beings and their social and natural systems. Developing the potential of these new concepts involves a substantial theoretical and empirical effort in many different fields, all of them interrelated by the crosscutting challenges of global complexity, interdisciplinarity, and urgency. Close collaboration of science, humanities, and culture is more desperately needed now than ever before in the history of humankind