Once again, the debate over corporate responsibility is gaining momentum. A renewed version of the popular initiative rejected in 2020 is expected soon, and the Federal Council is set to issue its position in the coming days. The fault lines are familiar: the left insists on moral responsibility, the right on preserving companies’ freedom to operate. In the process, a more fundamental question is often overlooked: whether the proposed measures will achieve their intended goal at all.
What is that goal? Simply put: to make the world a better place. Politicians across the spectrum share that aim. In the wake of the first initiative on corporate responsibility, Switzerland adopted an indirect counter-proposal, introducing mandatory sustainability reporting. Since 2023, companies have been required to disclose how they intend to limit risks to the environment and to human rights.
Even Habeck criticizes the excesses of regulation
Yet whether this regulation has achieved its purpose remains unknown. To this day, there has been no systematic evaluation of its benefits. However, the costs have been estimated: around CHF 130 million per year for Swiss companies. Had Switzerland adopted the earlier European Union proposal on sustainability reporting, as the Federal Council once intended, annual costs would have climbed to an estimated CHF 1.7 billion.
That scenario now seems unlikely, not least because the international benchmark has shifted. In the European Union, enthusiasm for ever more detailed regulation has declined, and sustainability reporting requirements have been scaled back. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen mentioned an overload of reporting obligations (too complex, too burdensome) as the reason.
These reporting requirements are only one piece of a broader regulatory landscape in sustainability. Elsewhere, too, the effectiveness and efficiency of such measures are increasingly under scrutiny in the European Union, including supply chain laws. These rules require companies to identify human rights and environmental risks among global suppliers, to exercise due diligence, and to report on their efforts. Even Robert Habeck, Germany’s former Green vice chancellor, has since admitted that, “with the best of intentions, we took a completely wrong turn.”
More reporting requirements can harm transparency
That observation goes to the heart of the matter: should we try to do good or to achieve good? The sociologist Max Weber once drew a distinction between two forms of political action: an “ethic of conviction,” guided by principles, and an “ethic of responsibility,” focused on outcomes. What matters is not simply whether a measure is well intentioned, but whether it actually works. Or, as Mr. Habeck suggested: it is taking the right turn that counts, not merely good intentions.
This is precisely where the Swiss debate starts to falter. There is no shortage of political will, whether in the Federal Council or in Parliament. But when it comes to actual impact, much remains unclear. Too often, each new regulation follows an ethic of conviction, meaning that something is done because it feels right. Good policy, however, must also reflect an ethic of responsibility: it should be evidence-based and attentive to unintended consequences.
The reporting requirements provide a telling example. It is by no means guaranteed that more regulation will yield better results. On the contrary, an excess of complex reporting obligations can actually reduce transparency by obscuring what truly matters. When companies are required to track hundreds of indicators, it becomes easy to lose sight of those that truly matter.
Pull the levers that actually make a difference
Other regulations, particularly those intended to have an impact abroad, carry their own risks. Swiss companies may withdraw from certain countries if the costs of ensuring compliance with standards among suppliers become too high. In their place, firms from countries with lower standards are likely to step in. The outcome would not be an improvement, but a deterioration.
The debate on sustainability in Switzerland thus serves as a reminder of how much lies beyond national control. Humility is in order. But that is not an argument against striving to improve the world. Rather, it is a call to use the limited levers that do exist with care and precision. Less moral posturing, more responsibility: the grand gesture may be sacrificed, and with it a sense of moral satisfaction, but the world may ultimately be a little better for it.
This article was published (in German) in the “NZZ am Sonntag” on March 22, 2026.
