Improving the Quality of the Comply or Explain Approach and Introducing Self-Monitoring Through Online Feedbacks

Codes of corporate governance and comply or explain approach are always at the core of the European Union agenda. This paper will deal both with the evolution of codes of corporate governance across Europe, and with the 2014 Recommendation. The idea put forwards is that regulators, at both EU and national level, should mainly improve the environment where the comply or explain approach is applied and introduce a system of self-monitoring through online feedbacks only. Arguably, this proposal might offer Member States a light-touch way to comply with Art. 11 of the 2014 Recommendation laying down that “[i]n order to motivate companies to comply with the relevant corporate governance code or to better explain departures from it, efficient monitoring needs to be carried out at national level.”