Publication

This policy brief criticizes the European Commission's (EC) proposal to mandate compliance with a local corporate governance code and to set minimum criteria for such codes. It argues that the EC missed an opportunity to set a European corporate governance code in the mid-1990s, and that many of the proposals are reactive to events and legislation in the US. The policy brief states that Europe should have highlighted the strength of its diversity and emphasized that the basic elements of corporate governance are better controlled in the EU than they are in the US, rather than embarking on a complex harmonization exercise.