Brussels, 25/01/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has no plans to draw up a European company governance code of conduct and has been repeating this since the launch of an action plan in 2003 to modernise company law. Member States are in the process of reviewing their national codes of conduct, however, and the European Commission hopes to coordinate this and study the degree of convergence of the different codes of conduct. This assessment will take place at the European Enterprise Governance Forum, which met in Brussels for the first time on 20 January. At the Forum, European Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said the first task of the Forum would be to examine existing codes of conduct for company governance in order to determine whether convergence exists and if so, to what extent. If not, it will assess how convergence could be achieved. The Luxembourg Presidency will be holding a conference on this topic on 28 June.
The European Enterprise Governance Forum is made up of 15 national experts for a three-year period from a series of different business milieus - academia, investors, members of regulatory bodies, etc (see Europe of 19 October 2004). It will meet two or three times a year. Bertrand Collomb, President of Lafarge and the Assocation francaise des enterprises privees (AFEP) has been appointed spokesperson for the Forum.
Since it launched its action plan to modernise company law and strengthen company governance, the European Union has taken a serious of initiatives to restore confidence on the financial markets. In October 2004, the Commission unveiled two recommendations concerning independent auditors. It proposed simplifying rules on company formation and changing company capital. Other proposals are in the process of being considered, like the fourteenth directive on company law and the shareholders' rights directives. In November 2004, the Competitiveness Council reached agreement in principle on the cross-border merger directive (see Europe of 27 November 2004).