Compliance with the 2020 Code

For the seventh time, GUBERNA and VBO FEB have conducted a joint study on compliance with the Belgian Corporate Governance Code ('Code'). This new edition is the first to focus on the 2020 Code. The results of this study can be summarised as follows: companies simply apply 89.9% of the provisions of the Code and for 6.4% of them they explain why they deviate from them. This indicates that listed companies make little or no use of the flexibility offered by the 'comply or explain' principle, as has already been found in previous studies. A less positive finding is that 4% of the Code's provisions are not applied, without explanation.

In its study of March 2019, the FSMA took stock for the first time of non-financial reporting by large listed companies in Belgium. In that study, the FSMA drew attention to good practices and presented a number of recommendations regarding the quality of reporting non-financial information.

Since the publication of that study, sustainability reporting has undergone significant development. It is for this reason that the FSMA has, two years later, drawn up a new overview of non-financial reporting by listed companies. The present study examines what areas have seen progress. It also looks at whether companies have taken into account the recommendations of the previous study.