The conference was opened by Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala with a speech on the structural changes in our country, which are triggered not only by the current geopolitical risks, but also by the desire to strengthen the position and competitiveness of the Czech Republic. He was followed by world-renowned speakers and experts on finance, geopolitics, management and investment, such as world bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb and former head of British intelligence MI6, Sir Alex Younger. They agreed that geopolitics today cannot be separated from business.
Vladimír Hlavinka, owner of ORGREZ and founder of ORGREZ ECO, spoke at an expert debate on how to approach ESG with a rational and thoughtful perspective. This is one of the key shifts that many companies are moving towards and which has been rightly discussed by leading European politicians recently. The pursuit of greater sustainability has so far been driven more by ideology, but the achievement of the set goals must now be purely rational and effective, the experts present agreed.
During the debate it was said, among other things:
Although the topic of sustainability has so far been treated more or less ideologically, it is not useless and has a rational core. Both environmental goals need to be approached rationally and sustainability needs to be considered from an economic perspective.
It is not about formally fulfilling something, reporting, but practically “living sustainability”, looking for and finding new business opportunities and incentives to innovate in this direction. Only those businesses that take up this challenge in a factually and economically rational way will survive.
Let us learn from the fact that in the 1990s we squandered an opportunity for higher quality by formally introducing ISO standards, and thus missed an opportunity to increase the competitiveness of Czech industry.
Key sectors for the Czech Republic and Europe, such as the energy sector or the automotive industry, must not lose their competitiveness because of the Green Deal, on the contrary, they must use it to innovate and develop new technologies.
The ongoing transformation of ORGREZ was also cited as an example. “For over 60 years, ORGREZ has been evolving alongside the energy industry, and it is changing fundamentally. So we have to change too, and not only be part of the classical, or if you like, traditional energy sector as we know it, but we have to have growth linked to the development of a new energy sector towards sustainability. I see our mission as building the coexistence of traditional energy and the emerging new energy,” said ORGREZ owner Vladimír Hlavinka during the debate.
The experts also agreed on the need to clarify the rules of ESG reporting and certification. Although the European CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) will not come into force until next year, companies are already demonstrating the sustainability of their business to their banks and investors, so the rules need to be clearly interpreted. In fact, we will discuss the European standards for reporting ESG indicators in one of our next articles.