In Denmark, the first law on Green Accounts was passed in July 1995. This law instructed a selected part of the Danish companies to prepare a Green Account containing general information about the company, a statement from the management and a quantitative account of the environmental performance. However, in 1999 the official evaluation of the law showed that the expectations to the Green Accounts were not fulfilled, and in 2002 the government strengthened the law. Among other new initiatives; the company should describe their environmental policy, goals and results if any. In this paper the contents, effects and potentials of this new law will be discussed in relation to experiences with the first law, and a short overview of the general trends in environmental reporting will be given. This leads to some amendments of any future revision of the law – in consideration of both reaching a broader target group to expand the coverage of the reports, and to increase the communication value of the reports.
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