Klimaaktionärsaktivismus

How binding must corporate climate transition plans be in order to contribute effectively to the climate transformation? Anna-Lena Vogt examines how an obligation to adopt climate transition plans should be classified within corporate law and how such plans can be monitored and enforced by shareholders and civil courts.

Anna-Lena Vogt examines, using the example of the climate transition plan obligation contained in Article 22 of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive between 2024 and 2026, how corporate climate responsibility can be embedded in German stock corporation law and the corporate governance of public companies, and how compliance can be subject to judicial review at the initiative of shareholders. Her central thesis is that statutory climate obligations aimed at achieving the 1.5°C target must neither be reduced to mere reporting and planning requirements nor left entirely to managerial discretion. The study begins with the juridification of directors’ duties through European climate due diligence obligations, which create new avenues for shareholder climate litigation. Although shareholders possess only limited direct means of influencing corporate policy, they can initiate judicial scrutiny of statutory climate obligations, particularly by challenging resolutions granting discharge to members of the management board. To determine the appropriate intensity of judicial review, the study combines an analysis grounded in stock corporation and company law with both a normative and an institutional approach. While the normative approach defines the scope of judicial review by reference to managerial discretion, the institutional approach focuses on the functional suitability and limitations of civil courts as supervisory bodies. The author demonstrates that the climate transition plan constitutes a statutory duty of the management board. Climate neutrality does not create an absolute obligation to reduce emissions to zero by a specified date; rather, it establishes an outcome-oriented duty of consideration requiring serious, appropriate, and proportionate transition efforts. The business judgment rule does not preclude substantive review of a climate transition plan. Instead, courts should apply a reasonableness review that takes into account scientific evidence, emissions accounting, reduction pathways, and the overall orientation of the plan, while refraining from substituting their own policy judgments for those of the company. In doing so, the study systematizes the interface between climate protection, stock corporation law, and civil procedure, and develops a framework for future climate transition plan obligations in Germany and the European Union.

Einleitung
Teil 1: Klimaschutz mit Plan? Die rechtliche Verankerung unternehmerischer Transformationsstrategien
§ 1: Klimawissenschaft als Grundlage der Klimaschutzregulierung
§ 2: Klimaplan in der Corporate Governance der Aktiengesellschaft
Teil 2: Kontrolldichte des unternehmerischen Klimatransformationsplans
§ 3: Zwischen Ermessen und Kontrolle: Gerichtliche Überprüfung von Entscheidungen der Unternehmensleitung
§ 4: Justiziabilität einer Klimaplanpflicht am Beispiel des Art. 22 CSDDD nach normativem Ansatz
§ 5: Zivilgerichtliche Kontrollintensität unternehmerischer Klimapläne nach dem institutionellen Ansatz
Teil 3: Abschließende Würdigung
§ 6: Die Rolle der Zivilgerichte im unternehmerischen Klimaschutz
Zusammenfassung in Thesen

• By (author) Anna-Lena Vogt