Taxation plays a significant role in developing ESG standards, as taxes and fiscal policies are basic instruments to foster human rights, while tax abuse prevents the effective promotion of ESG standards-based policies.

States have addressed the challenges posed by globalisation and digitisation of the economy, but these individual attempts have proved insufficient or inadequate.

Public opinion and political pressure on large, multinational companies seem to have laid down the building blocks of a new international taxation framework. US and EU pressure on digital giants has paved the way for the OECD two-pillar solution to address these tax challenges. Inevitably, the tax measures that may result from this approach will eventually permeate domestic tax systems of many countries and apply to most (if not all) economic sectors.

The chances and threads of these developments and their impact in pursuing ESG standards will be discussed in this session, particularly the need to adapt to new foreign investment structures.
Each jurisdiction has made its own progress, having different levels of adaptation so far, while projected foreign direct investments of multinational groups out of US and EU have commenced to adjust the configuration of their business approach, making focus on ESG as a key concept to be developed.