environmental sustainability

The initiative includes a competition law sustainability “sandbox” in which market participants could team up to work on sustainable business projects.

By David Little and Pierre Bichet

The Greek Competition Authority (HCC) has announced a public consultation on how competition law rules might be adapted to promote more sustainable business practices. The HCC published a Staff Discussion Paper and held a digital conference to launch the consultation.

The HCC’s exploratory proposals outline a number of novel concepts, including: (1) the creation of a competition law sustainability “sandbox” in which market participants could team up to work on sustainable business projects with some measure of protection from competition rules; and (2) the establishment of an “Advice Unit” comprising experts from different regulatory authorities who could provide informal advice on sustainability-related initiatives. The proposals also envisage the publication of general guidelines defining the contours of legitimate cooperation between rivals on sustainability projects.

By Paul Davies and Andrew Westgate

On 18 October 2017, the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will convene, after the week-long National Day holiday, marking one of the most important dates on the Chinese political calendar. Among the issues that National Congress members will surely discuss, is the importance of implementing strategies to further China’s green development. A crucial aspect of this discussion will be determining how funding can be channelled towards clean development.

China has achieved unprecedented economic growth over the last four decades, and is predicted to become the world’s largest economy before 2030, overtaking the United States. A by-product of this success however, has been severe damage to China’s ecology and environment, which the country is already taking action to address.