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Stichting World Benchmarking Alliance Foundation

WBA

The World Benchmarking Alliance is a non-profit organization that develops benchmarks to measure corporate performance on sustainability.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Kira Marie Peter-Hansen (Member of the European Parliament) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

17 Nov 2025 · Sustainability omnibus - update for civil society

Meeting with Kira Marie Peter-Hansen (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

3 Nov 2025 · Sustainability omnibus - update for civil society

Meeting with Kira Marie Peter-Hansen (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

2 Oct 2025 · Sustainability omnibus - update for civil society

Meeting with Barry Andrews (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur for opinion)

5 May 2025 · Omnibus

Meeting with Marie Toussaint (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur for opinion) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

29 Apr 2025 · Omnibus I

Meeting with Kira Marie Peter-Hansen (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and

29 Apr 2025 · Sustainability omnibus

Meeting with Nicolo Brignoli (Cabinet of Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis)

20 Mar 2025 · Omnibus

Meeting with Arthur Corbin (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné) and WWF European Policy Programme and

12 Dec 2024 · Sustainable corporate reporting

Meeting with René Repasi (Member of the European Parliament)

29 Aug 2024 · Exchange on Sustainable Finance

World Benchmarking Alliance Urges Mandatory EU Sustainability Reporting Rules

7 Jul 2023
Topic — New EU rules for how companies report their environmental and social impacts.
Message — The organization demands that the Commission keep sustainability reporting mandatory for core climate and social indicators. They urge authorities not to weaken rules for emissions, biodiversity, and worker protections.12
Why — Stricter mandatory standards provide the group with more reliable data for their corporate accountability benchmarks.3
Impact — Investors and vulnerable workers lose access to critical data needed to ensure a fair green transition.4
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Meeting with Beatrice Covassi (Member of the European Parliament) and Fairshare Educational Foundation (ShareAction) and Accountancy Europe

5 Jul 2023 · Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence

Meeting with Florian Denis (Cabinet of Commissioner Mairead Mcguinness)

29 Jun 2023 · WBA's Report on the State of Play in the Financial System across Governance and Climate

Meeting with Lucrezia Busa (Cabinet of Commissioner Didier Reynders)

22 Jun 2023 · CSDDD

Meeting with Frances Fitzgerald (Member of the European Parliament)

25 May 2023 · Nature Restoration

Meeting with Axel Voss (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and BUSINESSEUROPE and

8 Mar 2023 · Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence

Meeting with Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

9 Feb 2023 · Forced Labour ban

Meeting with Tiemo Wölken (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur for opinion) and ClientEarth AISBL and Global Witness

9 Nov 2022 · Lieferkettengesetz

Meeting with Frances Fitzgerald (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur for opinion)

24 Oct 2022 · Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (Assistant on behalf of MEP)

Meeting with Pascal Durand (Member of the European Parliament)

19 Oct 2022 · CSDDD (APA only)

Meeting with Claude Gruffat (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

29 Sept 2022 · CSDDD

World Benchmarking Alliance supports EU ban on forced labor products

20 Jun 2022
Topic — The European Commission is consulting on a ban for products made using forced labor.
Message — WBA supports the EU initiative and recommends using its benchmarking data to assess corporate human rights performance. They emphasize that the ban should align with the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive to ensure comprehensive risk mitigation.12
Why — The alliance would gain greater influence as their benchmarks become essential for regulatory compliance.34
Impact — Underperforming companies in the ICT and automotive sectors would lose access to the EU market.56
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World Benchmarking Alliance urges mandatory EU corporate sustainability rules

23 May 2022
Topic — The consultation explores legislative proposals for mandatory corporate sustainability due diligence duties.
Message — The organization advocates for mandatory human rights duties and board-level accountability for sustainability impacts. They propose linking executive pay to sustainability performance and requiring comprehensive climate transition plans.123
Why — Mandatory rules provide the consistent data needed for the organization's corporate benchmarks.4
Impact — Under-performing companies lose the advantage of hiding behind the sustainability efforts of competitors.5
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Meeting with Katherine Power (Cabinet of Commissioner Mairead Mcguinness)

20 Jul 2021 · Introductory meeting

Response to Climate change mitigation and adaptation taxonomy

18 Dec 2020

WBA welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation and the attempt to look more broadly at the definition of sustainability than just a focus on climate mitigation. WBA is seeking to help companies to measure what matters most to society and the planet, in support of the SDGs. This means making data on the impact of companies widely available, reliable and comparable and building on existing frameworks, catalysing the process towards global standardisation. Through WBA’s seven system transformations (Social; Digital; Circular; Food & Agriculture; Energy & Decarbonisation; Urban; and Finance) we believe these are vital to put our society, planet and economy on a more sustainable and resilient path to accomplish the 2030 Agenda. Capturing sustainability impacts will mean that it is essential to require aligning company reporting to the seven systems, using the SDG framework to capture companies’ ‘negative’ as well as ‘positive’ impacts. We are developing a publicly accessible Financial Systems Transformation benchmark looking at 400 financial institutions – asset managers, banks, pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and financial services firms. There are 103 European-headquartered financial institutions many of whom will be affected by this legislation. Furthermore, for investors, one of the challenges is that ESG disclosure has typically focused on risk to portfolio. WBA believes it is essential to look at the risk of portfolio to environmental and social impacts which reflects the double materiality perspective. Capturing sustainability impacts should require aligning company reporting to the WBA seven systems approach. As an example, ‘Assessing Low-Carbon Transition’ methodologies are used to develop the ratings that WBA translates into rankings for the Climate and Energy Benchmarks, – including into R&D for the low-carbon transition – and companies’ integration of a low-carbon economy in their current and future business models. For many of the high emitters these R&D and business model pieces are crucial for the transformative change we are encouraging, e.g., for Automotive companies, are they investing in business segments that are developing car/vehicle-sharing apps. In the field of corporate governance, we need to know which policy commitments are implemented in practice, and by whom. Our Corporate Human Right Benchmark results have shown that companies that disclose board remuneration tied to human rights tend to score much better than peers. The proposed model for the WBA social transformation reinforces the importance of responsible business conduct, including topics such as labour protections, managing impacts on workers in the supply chain and paying fair taxes to ensure governments have sufficient revenue to protect and develop their people. The context makes the development of the social indicators more relevant than ever within the development of the social taxonomy. While all companies should support human development through contributing to the 2030 Agenda, they must do it in a responsible way that respects the rights of workers, consumers and the wider community. WBA will be assessing 1,000 companies in 2021 and a further 1,000 companies in 2022 on core set of social indicators representing 'must haves' for all companies if they are to contribute to SDG transformations in a way that leaves no one behind. This includes a strong emphasis on human and labour rights, due diligence, decent work and ethical conduct. Current social thresholds within the taxonomy regulation are too vague (in accordance with UNGPs) and do not recognise the interconnectedness of issues such as the links between social and decarbonisation as part of the just transition.
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Meeting with Aleksandra Tomczak (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

6 Nov 2020 · Just transition benchmarking in private sector

Meeting with Aleksandra Tomczak (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

27 Jul 2020 · Benchmarking in the energy sector

Meeting with Diederik Samsom (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

9 Jun 2020 · Speech on recovery at the WBA Allies Assembly

Meeting with Diederik Samsom (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans), Helena Braun (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

22 Apr 2020 · European Green Deal

Response to EU Action Plan of Gender equality and women’s empowerment in external relations for 2021-2025

3 Apr 2020

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) welcomes the future Action Plan on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in External Relations (GAP III 2021-2025) as a way to accelerate progress towards meeting SDG 5 (Gender Equality) by 2030, as well as the gender dimensions of all of the SDGs. WBA is working to incentivise and accelerate companies’ efforts to achieve the SDGs by assessing corporate performance, business impact and alignment with the Goals. By assigning a value to social good, the WBA will help to create a market that rewards corporate leadership while challenging those that lag behind. The focus of the EU Action Plan will highlight how gender inequality remains a persistent issue globally. While the EU has a key role to play in working closely with partner governments to advance gender equality, it can also influence private sector behaviour in countries through its external policy and funding interventions .The private sector, through its extensive supply chains especially in developing countries, can promote gender equality and women’s empowerment by setting standards, implementing best practices and taking concrete actions in terms of tackling discrimination, ensuring women’s health and well-being and addressing sexual harassment and gender-based violence. It is therefore essential to look at how to mainstream gender across the project, policy and programme lifecycle to improve delivery. In practice this means having a coherent approach for benchmarking and evaluating policies from a gender perspective in order to reinforce EU policies and increase their societal impact. The methodology of the new WBA Gender Benchmark, published on 31 March 2020, addresses these very issues. This benchmark assesses and ranks the world’s most influential companies on how they drive gender equality and women’s empowerment across their full chain, including the workplace, supply chain, marketplace and community. It includes 34 indicators (spread across 106 questions) that capture issues such as female representation in leadership positions, the gender pay gap, benefits (e.g., maternity/ paternity leave, childcare, flexible work), sexual and reproductive health and rights, violence and harassment prevention and remediation, and company initiatives in the communities in which they operate. The Gender Benchmark is anchored primarily in SDG 5 but has linkages with other SDGs (e.g., 10, 8, 1, 3). In an effort to drive further gender data harmonisation, it also draws on an extensive set of principles, normative standards and corporate reporting frameworks such as the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) gender recommendations, the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), the UNDP Gender Equality Seal (GES), the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index (BGEI), Equileap and others. The first iteration of the Gender Benchmark, will focus on the Apparel industry, evaluating and assessing the world’s 36 leading apparel companies. WBA will publish an overall ranking and report, all of which will be publicly available and accessible to all. This is intended to enable all stakeholders, from consumers and investors to employees and business leaders beyond the apparel sector, to make informed decisions and encourage stronger corporate impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is part of a broader movement that WBA is driving to increase private sector impact towards a sustainable future for all by developing benchmarks that measure and compare companies’ performance on the SDGs. The current plan is to publish the ranking and reporting in September 2020, although this is under consideration given the COVID-19 pandemic. https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/ https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/gender-benchmark/ https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/gender-benchmark-methodology/
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Response to Revision of Non-Financial Reporting Directive

27 Feb 2020

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Inception Impact Assessment regarding the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and recommends that the Commission pursue the third policy option identified within the Assessment – namely, to revise and strengthen the provisions of the NFRD. Key problems to overcome from the review of the NFRD include comparability, reliability, and the consistency of information. We would advise a focus on the following key areas: • Encourage mandatory disclosure of the organisation’s material positive and negative non-financial impacts on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); • Include the provision of specific categories of companies by sectors not currently covered by the NFRD to help prioritise a practical agenda to promote both social and environmental performance and economic growth; • Clarify definitions of non-financial performance by making more explicit linkages of disclosure data to corporate sustainability goals; • Reinforce the supply of non-financial information through greater harmonisation of data; • Ensure disclosure principles that are chosen – and relevant – to ensure the incorporation of the SDGs into business strategy and transparency in relation to risks, opportunities, and impacts; • Ensure that recommended disclosures are appropriate and complete to improve credibility of disclosures; and • Ensure all companies under the scope of the legislation use a non-financial reporting benchmark. While the focus areas outlined above will be critical to strengthening the NFRD, it is important to note that disclosures alone don’t lead to change. In addition, as the Inception Impact Assessment points out, the NFRD’s effectiveness is hampered by non-financial information that is not standardised, sufficiently comparable, and able to meet users’ needs. To this end, WBA would like to see the NFRD continue to push for non-financial disclosures that incorporate data on company impacts across their value chains, including at the supply chain and consumer levels. The overall NFRD framework must also encourage the use of disclosures by multiple stakeholders to promote consistency and comparability. WBA therefore advocates for a clear reference to benchmarks as a tool for standardising disclosures based on impact-driven metrics, as well as allowing for comparison between company performance at a thematic and industry level. WBA also recommends explicit reference to the importance of continued harmonisation and alignment in approach to reporting and indicator development to ensure that companies do not face an undue burden of reporting differently across multiple platforms. Lastly, WBA encourages the inclusion of a specific provision outlining the intent to use non-financial disclosures to support implementation and achievement of the SDGs by the private sector. We have already seen the importance of non-financial information to signalling company impacts on the SDGs through the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, for example, which recently found that of 200 companies assessed in the 2019 benchmark, 49% scored zero on mandatory human rights due diligence. This indicates a massive failure in current disclosure practices, which a more robust NFRD could help to course correct. Similarly, we’ve seen the importance of non-financial disclosure at the national level in Australia, where pressure by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors on re-election of board members contributed significantly to increasing the proportion of women directors in the country. Explicit guidance on these issues through the NFRD could help to promote accelerated action by companies to ensure compliance with regulations. WBA is supportive of NFRD reforms that embed sustainability, in the form of non-financial disclosures, in reporting requirements for companies. We are committed to continuing to engage with the Commission throughout this process.
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Response to Gender equality in the EU

13 Feb 2020

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Roadmap for the European Commission’s Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-24. As the roadmap indicates, gender inequality remains a persistent issue globally – in politics, at work, at home and in the community. In order to achieve meaningful change through the Commission’s Strategy, it is vital to consider the role of the private sector in driving gender equality. This is because companies, while varied in their approaches and levels of commitment to it, stand to evolve in how they promote gender equality and women’s empowerment across their entire value chains. It is essential therefore to look at how to mainstream gender across the project, policy and programme lifecycle to improve delivery. In practice this means having a coherent approach for benchmarking and evaluating policies from a gender perspective in order to reinforce EU policies and increase their societal impact. The WBA is currently developing a fully transparent, free and publicly available Gender Benchmark to measure and accelerate corporate impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is part of a broader movement that the WBA is driving to increase private sector impact towards a sustainable future for all by developing benchmarks that measure and compare companies’ performance on the SDGs. The Gender Benchmark assesses and compares the private sector’s contribution to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It is anchored in SDG 5, while it also recognizes key linkages with other SDGs. It is grounded in key international frameworks including the gender recommendations on the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, ILO conventions and the Women’s Empowerment Principles. It uses an approach that is comprehensive, building on the achievements and learnings of a broad set of gender initiatives both within and beyond the corporate setting, and considers the expectations of a broad set of stakeholders. The Benchmark captures: •The full value chain, including the workplace, marketplace, supply chain and community •The most salient gender themes relevant to companies in each context, including among others Representation, Compensation & Benefits, and Violence & Harassment, which directly complement the Commission’s highlighted Strategy topics (i.e., gender balance on company boards, pay transparency and the gender pay gap / work/life balance, and violence against women, respectively) (*Note: the gender perspective on climate and AI are also captured in the context of other WBA benchmarks.) •A Robust set of indicators that look beyond policies/commitments and into performance •An industry-specific approach, starting with the Apparel industry. Ultimately, the Gender Benchmark will equip companies, financial institutions, governments, civil society and individuals with the information they need to assess and compare the private sector’s contribution to gender equality & women’s empowerment. It can serve as a global accountability mechanism and help companies evolve in further promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The final methodology for the Gender Benchmark will be published in March 2020 and the first iteration of the Gender Benchmark, spotlighting the Apparel industry, will launch in September 2020. The knowledge and experience acquired during the development of this Benchmark, paired with the actual data, will aim to provide valuable input to the Commission’s work on developing and implementing its Gender Equality Strategy. About WBA WBA has developed a movement around increasing the private sector’s role and impact in advancing the SDGs. WBA consists of over 115 multi-stakeholder allies who, collectively, represent $15.3 trillion of assets under management. www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/gender-equality-and-empowerment-benchmark/
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Response to A new Circular Economy Action Plan

20 Jan 2020

This feedback response to the European Commission roadmap outlines key elements of the ambition of the World Benchmarking Alliance (‘WBA’) to scale up and incentivise the private sector contribution to transforming the EU towards a Circular economy, responding to the commitments of the European Green Deal. Business has a major role in leading the transformative change required to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) develops free and publicly available benchmarks that measure and compare company performance on the SDGs. By 2023 a total of 2000 keystone companies will be assessed on their progress against the SDGs. Benchmarks equip financial institutions (incl. investors), governments, civil society, individuals and companies with the information they need to engage and step up. In doing so we create a system that recognises leadership and creates accountability for those that continue to lag behind. The WBA will use a comprehensive systems approach to develop benchmarks. We need to place a strong emphasis on transforming those systems which have the greatest potential to drive economic, environmental and social progress and achieve the SDGs. Systems thinking can help us make better sense of the issues, as well as identify the most influential companies. WBA will work alongside governments, investors and civil society in a cross-sector partnership to drive change within these keystone companies and beyond. Please find here a reference to WBA’s system transformation report. (https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/systems-transformations-report/) One of the seven system transformations will be Circular where the WBA will use a benchmarking approach to measure the impact of companies across various and critical industries such as apparel, chemicals, construction, consumer goods and plastics manufacturers. This benchmark is intended to incentivise companies to align their strategies and operations to transition away from a linear model to a circular one, through the adoption of design principles, sourcing strategies and promoting business models compatible with such model. The benchmark will also inform investors and civil society on the advancement of companies on the necessary journey towards a circular world. Insight in potential drivers for the circular economy can incentivise the creation of circular business models, which are needed to deliver on the full Circular transformation. Full response attached
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