Bridging Environmental Protection and Profit Corporate Interests in Megaprojects: Any Changes Following the EU Directive 2024/1760?

The paper analyses, from a theoretical and comparative legal perspective, an increasingly prevalent issue in the field of environmental sustainability, understood as the need to strike a balance between the general interest of environment and private profit corporate interests. Focus is given to the issue of accountability of megaprojects commissioners, not with reference to the environmental sustainability of the megaprojects themself, yet to the behaviour of the companies that carry out the works. This is to say, conducts that extends beyond the subjective sphere of the client, but over which the client exerts a certain degree of influence, nonetheless. The starting point will be European Directive 2024/1760 (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive). It aims to hold companies that dominate supply chains accountable for environmental sustainability of activities carried out by other players of a supply chains. The author puts forward the argument that domestic legislators should extend the applicability of such a Directive - currently expressly provided for only with regard to supply chains - to megaprojects. In doing so, clear delineation should be provided regarding client’s responsibility for harmful behaviours of contractors, on the basis that the situation is different from that of a supply chain.