In France, in companies with at least 50 employees, the employer must provide the staff representatives (the ‘Social and Economic Committee’) with an economic and social database, which gathers all the information necessary for the numerous consultations and recurrent information requirements with regard to the Committee. The French Climate Law of August 2021 broadened the required content of this economic and social database by adding a new topic: the environmental consequences of an organisation’s activity.
The specific details of the content of the database (the ‘BDESE’) may be determined by collective agreement or by agreement with the Committee. In the absence of an agreement, the so-called ‘supplemental’ provisions of the Labour Code apply. A new decree on 26 April 2022 has now set out the supplemental content that the BDESE must contain on environmental issues. Some of the BDESE indicators have also been adapted to bring them into line with prior changes in the Labour Code.
For organisations with fewer than 300 employees, the environmental indicators in the economic, social and environmental database must include:
Where the required environmental data and information is not published at the company level (e.g. where it is only available at the group level), it must be accompanied by additional relevant information to enable it be put into perspective at the company level.
The new environmental indicators vary according to whether or not the organisation is required to draw up a non-financial performance declaration. If so, the BDESE must include:
Where the organisation is not required to make a non-financial performance declaration, the BDESE must include:
In the absence of an agreement setting out the content, frequency and procedures for recurring consultations with the staff representative body, the Social and Economic Committee (CSE), the environmental indicators in the BDESE must be made available to the CSE for consultation on the following topics:
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