ESG and the Reformed Italian Constitution: Toward a Constitutionally Oriented Reading of Corporate Sustainability

This chapter examines whether adherence to ESG criteria, specifically corporate social responsibility, is compatible with the new perspectives in the 2022 version of the Italian constitution. The goal is to reconstruct the scope of the new constitutional provisions, especially the intergenerational dimension. The terms in which the application of ESG criteria can be considered as constitutionally qualified can then be verified, also in the context of the principle of solidarity. A constitutionally oriented interpretation of social responsibility principles is proposed as a tool to pursue the private initiative function envisaged in the constitution’s new Article 41.