Finnish Sustainability Report Has Lessons for EU Regulators: An Interview with Dr. Nikodemus Solitander

Dr. Nikodemus Solitander is a researcher and associate dean at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, and the director of the Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Hanken. He was the principal investigator for the Cumulative Effects of EU Sustainability Legislation (CEULA) project, which examines the impact of European Union (EU) sustainability regulations on Finnish firms.

“The things that these regulations try to grapple with are fundamental when it comes to basic human rights and climate change as a threat to humanity itself,” insisted Solitander. “If we can’t deal with the issues that are underlying the regulation, then we need to use all kinds of legal mechanisms and approaches. We know that if we just do it on a voluntary basis, we will not get there soon enough.”

As Solitander told Graham Freeman, senior reporter for sustainability for 3E, “My sense is that it’s inevitable that regulation will come because progress is so slow.”

According to Solitander, one of the main findings of the study is that not surprisingly, the level of preparedness swings widely, both amongst Finnish companies and those in certain EU countries. Some firms are quite well prepared, while some are not prepared at all.