…In January 2013…the European Parliament adopted two resolutions reiterating the importance of company transparency on environmental and social matters… The adoption of this Directive was hard fought for, and can be seen as a major achievement…This compares favourably to UK non-financial reporting which, as explained below, is focused essentially on providing information to shareholders on which they can assess the financial performance of the company…The inclusion of risk management processes such as due diligence is useful when trying to understand how companies are tackling the issues which they face in this realm…[T]here are a number of shortcomings in the new Directive.  It does not cover many companies… The methods for enforcement of the obligations and independent verification of the reports are left to member state discretion…[T]he new European requirement takes a different, and from a human rights protection point of view better, stance by looking at impact on society.