From January to June 2025, we had the opportunity to support the FPS Economy, in collaboration with Simont Braun, on a strategic study exploring how competition law can better enable corporate cooperation for sustainability. This project responds to a growing need: to provide companies with greater legal clarity and confidence to engage collectively in the transition while ensuring compliance with competition rules.​

 

Context and challenges - aligning sustainability and competition law

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As companies increasingly collaborate to address environmental and social challenges, many face legal uncertainty when it comes to competition law. How far can they cooperate for sustainability without crossing antitrust lines? In this context, the Belgian Federal Public Service for Economy commissioned a study to better understand how the current framework shapes, and sometimes limits,  collective action.

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Our approach - listening to the field and comparing international practices

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To address this complex topic, together with Simont Braun, we combined 3 complementary lenses:

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• A legal analysis of EU and Belgian competition law, focusing on how existing provisions (particularly Article 101 TFEU and the 2023 Horizontal Guidelines) apply to sustainability agreements between companies.

• A benchmarking study comparing how six EU member states and the UK are interpreting and implementing competition rules to enable sustainability cooperation, identifying emerging best practices such as “open-door” guidance and sector-specific exemptions.

• A field analysis conducted through a confidential survey and qualitative interviews with Belgian companies from diverse sectors (energy, construction, logistics, finance, agri-food, tech, etc.). This provided firsthand insights into how businesses navigate the balance between compliance and collaboration, the practical barriers they face, and their expectations for clearer guidance.

 

 

By bridging legal expertise and on-the-ground perspectives, the study offered actionable recommendations to help both regulators and companies create a more enabling framework for collective sustainability initiatives.

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Results and impact - a call for clarity and collaboration

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The findings reveal a shared awareness of the need for cooperation to meet sustainability goals, but also a widespread sense of legal uncertainty. Companies expressed a strong demand for clearer guidance, early dialogue with regulators, and better tools to assess the compliance of their projects. The study also highlights good practices from pioneering authorities such as the Netherlands and the UK. 

 

The study provides concrete recommendations for Belgian authorities to strengthen guidance, coordination, and trust between public bodies and businesses. It contributed to the public debate at the AEDC–VSMR conference and helped inform the draft sustainability guidelines published by the Belgian Competition Authority, now open for consultation until 20 November 2025.

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