Every two years, GUBERNA and the FEB carry out a study of compliance with the provisions of the 2020 Belgian Code on Corporate Governance. In particular, this study enables the Corporate Governance Committee to understand how Belgian listed companies and their boards make use of the flexibility offered by the "comply or explain" principle of the 2020 Code.

The latest survey of 2022 annual reports shows that Belgian listed companies apply an average of 93.8% of the provisions of the 2020 Code. In 5.9% of cases, companies apply the "comply or explain" principle and provide an explanation to justify any deviation. Finally, only 0.3% of the Code's provisions are deviated from, without this being duly justified by an explanation in the annual report.

Regarding the "explains", the proportion of non-qualitative explanations has fallen from 12.3% in 2020 to 3.1% in 2022