Sustainability in EU business and financial market law: An interdisciplinary methodology

A sustainable transformation of the private sector can be achieved. However, traditional public policy approaches have not been enough to bring about necessary change in corporate practice. This chapter draws attention to the need to understand the role of the EU regulatory framework for business and finance in enabling sustainable development. In this vein, it presents a methodology which enables the examination of the interconnectivity between EU business law and financial market law and its role in sustainable development. This chapter suggests that a mixed method is necessary, consisting of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in combination with semi-structured interviews with experts who have insight into EU policy-making in the fields of business and finance. In order to increase the strength of the descriptive understandings of the SNA, this chapter proposes to integrate in-depth analytical insights from qualitative data on how business law and financial market law is evolving. Legislative instruments and policy documents are used as nodes in the networks, while citation links are used as links in the network, which can reveal legal interconnectivity in novel ways. This chapter argues that using this methodology can bring about a better understanding of what is likely to happen in the near future in terms of policy development, as well as providing new insights into what could be done in business law and financial market law to enhance sustainable business practices.

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