Est-il pertinent de durcir le droit européen de l’environnement ?

Since January 1, 2017, Directive 2014/95/EU has required European listed firms, banks, and insurance companies with more than five hundred employees to publish information about their environmental impacts. In this context, we question the need for a strengthened European environmental law. To achieve this, we firstly analyze the regulatory frameworks of all European countries before Directive 2014/95/EU, in order to divide countries into three categories: (1) countries with hard law, which publish a coercive law of environmental reporting, (2) countries with soft law, which propose guidelines or codes of conduct emanating from government bodies; and (3) countries with flexible law, which have neither regulations nor recommendations on behalf of the state, but do have sporadic professional initiatives. We then select one country from each of these categories (France, Germany, and Italy) and, using different statistical methods, compare the impact of the regulatory framework on the level of environmental disclosure of companies. The results show the beneficial effects of mandatory regulations. Indeed, the environmental disclosures of French companies regulated by hard law are superior to those of German companies subjected to soft law or to those of Italian companies with flexible law. We can therefore conclude that it would be beneficial to strengthen environmental law in Europe.