Corporate Governance and Its European Dimensions: Current Trends and Perspectives

This paper is about corporate governance within EU. The ideas and comments embedded results of a research project on the issues of corporate governance from the perspective of EU integration and competitiveness. Field research, desk researches and statistical techniques have been employed. However, the author’s personal experience was instrumental for the final tuning of the conclusions. This paper aims to shed light on the contribution of corporate governance (micro-level) to the macro processes within the EU. Drawing on modern views on corporate governance the author studies the EU perspective of corporate governance: the process of transforming the main principles of EU in a framework that encourages the establishment of EU standards of corporate governance. It is well known that through its system of principles and tools corporate governance adds value to the shareholders' wealth, and to the good standards of business, on one hand, and facilitates the removal of barriers to the free movement of capital. Through the lens of the soft law and self-regulation some differences in EU standards, on one hand, and the practice of corporate governance in US companies are discussed. The topics under observation determined the structure of the paper: the introductory part is about the current understanding and theoretical views on corporate governance, the second part sheds lights on the national features and differences in corporate governance, the third part focuses on the European trends/ features of corporate governance and finally future developments are sketched.