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Corporate Responsibility

Corporate responsibility is now an entrenched function of companies, interwoven with marketing, stakeholder relations and investor relations.

Governments, investors and the general public have all become more sophisticated in their conception and reception of corporate responsibility.

The law has caught up with the claims. In the European Union (EU), Directive (EU) 2024/825 applies from 27 September 2026: generic claims such as green, climate neutral or environmentally friendly are banned unless the company can show the evidence. The Commission withdrew its separate Green Claims proposal in June 2025. The consumer rules stand.

Offsets remain in use. MSCI Carbon Markets, a data provider, tracks more than 16,000 companies that have bought carbon credits. End users spent 1.04 billion United States dollars (USD) on credits in 2025 and retired 168 million of them, by Sylvera’s count, and in 2026 to early October spending reached 798 million, up 14 percent on the same months of 2025. Offtake deals, which pay for credits before they exist, came to 12.3 billion in 2025. The question is no longer whether a company can buy a credit but what it can claim from one.

Due diligence on supply chains has been narrowed and delayed. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive now applies only to companies with more than 5,000 employees and 1.5 billion euros in turnover, from July 2029. Fewer companies are obliged. The expectation on the largest remains, and their suppliers feel it through contracts.

Corporate greenwashing, or limited and ad-hoc initiatives, can have the opposite of the desired effect. The evidence still shows a negative return on half-hearted corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending, and there is now a legal risk beside the reputational one.

The ability to target CSR spending on strategic initiatives with specific outcomes is central to effective planning and to showing a positive rate of return from the investment.

Sources: Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition; Directive (EU) 2026/470; European Commission, withdrawal of the Green Claims proposal, June 2025; MSCI Carbon Markets, 2025 Global Carbon Credit Market: Year in Review, January 2026; Sylvera, State of Carbon Credits 2025, and Carbon Market Data Snapshot, 5 October 2026. Further reading: stock-market reaction to CSR.