To start today's episode, can you give a brief overview of the new European Directive on Combating Corruption and why it is of interest to private sector organisations around the world? Michael, can I come to you first?

Absolutely.

I'll kick us off.

So the European directive on combating corruption came into force at the end of May, beginning of June this year.

The intention of the directive is to set anti-corruption standards that will apply now across the European Union and address corruption more consistently.

from one EU jurisdiction to the next.

And it does that in several key ways.

As our UK expert, Simon also explained that the key challenge is not necessarily to build a new compliance program from scratch, but to demonstrate that existing anti-bribery and corruption frameworks are effectively being governed, monitored and adapted to this evolving regulatory landscape.

Or is it pretty uniform across there?

I think what initially happened was there were a group of something like eight provinces that introduced these measures.

annual and monthly power markets and sort of quickly push to put most electricity demand into those markets.

Then there was another group of eight that pushed ahead with implementing those sorts of markets.

They all had the intention of introducing spot markets and I think the latest position is that every province should be in the process of implementing a spot market.

Whether they are sort of doing it on more than trial basis, that's not entirely clear.

So certainly the intention is they all should be in the process of fully implementing the monthly, the annual and the spot markets.

One is, are there parts of the system that look and have to look sort of distinctly Chinese, basically? Are there things where they've looked at other models and said, oh, that won't work here because of our particular governance structure or provincial structure or the nature of the way that our economy is set up? Are there things which maybe could be used elsewhere, but which look very particularly sort of Chinese about the way that the system is designed? Well, one

Now, from your research, I mean, what's the most important economic opportunity and challenge challenges it actually presents?

Well, of course, that's a really good question.

I think I think.

first and foremost net zero from an economic point of view is about avoiding big economic losses um so it's important not to overplay the upside in terms of you know business opportunities against avoiding the downside which my colleagues at the university of cambridge estimate you know anywhere between 15 and 30 percent of gdp by uh 2100 and perhaps you know as high as 9% of GDP by 2050 in Europe.

So, you know, net zero primarily is about avoiding the economic damage that rising temperatures are going to do to the economy.

I mean, how does this play into the hands of accelerating net zero?

I think very much, I mean, one of the major drivers of the continuation of net zero policy into the 2020s has been the war in Ukraine and now the sort of war in the Middle East.

So, yeah, you know, net zero doesn't look as expensive if it's managing to save you facing fossil fuel costs, which might be increased by a factor of 10 in one year.