It’s nice when the good guys win…

We reported earlier this month on the disappointing news that the European Parliament appeared to have bowed to the pressure of lobbyists and deferred the implementation dates for their two key pieces of green legislation, being the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

Challenges to that decision abound, but in the meantime a glimmer of hope can be found in the form of the latest report by InfluenceMap, an NGO which tracks and ranks the engagement of companies and industry associations on EU climate policy.

Despite the actions of their associated trade bodies, InfluenceMap’s latest findings suggest that when asked directly, businesses are increasingly supportive of the EU’s climate policy. Specifically, they found the number of companies directly aligning their growth plans to meet climate change goals grew from 3% in 2019 to 23% in 2025. If you widen the cohort to include companies that either fully or partially align, that figure increases to an impressive 52%. Hard core naysayers also reduced significantly, with the number of companies saying their plans were misaligned with climate policy falling from 34% to 14%,

The results might be surprising given the number of headlines emanating from the US at the moment, but InfluenceMap concluded that business horizons were much longer than political terms of office, so were not “easily swayed by shorter term political developments”.

What is surprising is the apparent gap between the positions taken by businesses, and that taken by their representative trade associations. Perhaps a salient reminder to us all of the need to maintain an open dialogue and engage effectively with our stakeholders and wider communities.