A fundamental feature of contemporary civil society is the transformation of risk from an exceptional and
marginal occurrence into an intrinsic component of social organisation. Modern society is increasingly
immersed in a dimension in which risk no longer constitutes merely an accidental consequence, but rather
the permanent framework within which public institutions and economic operators make strategic decisions.
Technological development, the financialisation of the economy, the globalisation of markets, and the
digitalisation of administrative and business relations have generated new forms of risk - often invisible,
systemic, and not entirely foreseeable absent specifically designed oversight mechanisms - capable of
extending beyond territorial boundaries and even beyond the regulatory system’s own capacity for control.
This phenomenon was effectively described by Ulrich Beck’s theory of the Risikogesellschaft (“risk society”),
according to which modernity is characterised not only by the production of wealth, but also by the systemic production of global, interconnected, and difficult-to-control risks. From this perspective, risk no longer
represents a merely pathological contingency, but rather the structural condition within which contemporary
societies operate.
What emerges is a progressive shift from the logic of repression to that of governance: a transformation
affecting both public administration and the organisation of private enterprise. The very function of law is
thereby profoundly altered. Law no longer merely regulates completed events; rather, it increasingly seeks to
anticipate the future through preventive and predictive models aimed at managing uncertainty. Prevention
progressively supplants reaction; compliance tends to prevail over sanction; and probabilistic risk
assessment increasingly replaces the traditional ascertainment of facts. Consequently, both administrative
and entrepreneurial activity become subsumed within permanent systems of monitoring, control, and self-
assessment.
It is within this framework that the interdisciplinary research project “The Risk Society between Legal
Governance (ESG) and Extraordinary Corporate Events” is situated.
The central focus of the research lies in the progressive emergence of risk-governance models grounded in
the combination of regulatory instruments, internal organisational systems, and predictive technologies. Risk
management through Model 231, Model 262, cooperative tax compliance programmes, Tax Control
Frameworks, ESG systems, and algorithmic decision-making tools all represent different manifestations of a
common phenomenon: the construction of mechanisms designed to govern the economic and legal
uncertainty permeating contemporary economic activity. Within this context also falls the recent evolution of the European framework governing corporate
sustainability reporting and sustainability due diligence. Such developments do not signal a retreat from the
ESG paradigm; rather, they reveal the need to reconcile sustainability objectives with principles of
proportionality, effectiveness, and organisational sustainability of compliance obligations, thereby
demonstrating how compliance itself may become - where excessively burdensome or overly formalised - an
autonomous source of risk for undertakings.
In this regard, the most recent European sustainability standards, particularly ESRS G1, attribute increasing
relevance to tax governance, tax-risk management, and fiscal transparency as factors capable of affecting
the reputational and financial sustainability of undertakings. Taxation thus tends to become a structural
component of ESG governance, no longer confined to the mere dimension of tax compliance. Tax risk no
longer consists solely in the danger of future disputes, but evolves into reputational, organisational, and
ESG-related risk capable of directly affecting corporate sustainability, access to financial markets, and
institutional trust.
A second major issue concerns the relationship between technology and legal decision-making. The
increasing use of algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence within administrative and corporate
processes radically alters the structure of decision-making itself. Algorithms no longer perform merely
executive functions; rather, they progressively shape the selection of relevant information, the classification
of risks, and the construction of the final judgment. This development is particularly delicate in tax law, where
predictive systems and data-analysis platforms enable tax authorities to elaborate increasingly sophisticated
models for the selection of fiscal risk.
Yet the apparent neutrality of technology risks generating new forms of decisional opacity. Algorithmic risk
does not lie merely in technical error, but in the progressive de-responsibilisation of the human decision-
maker and in the difficulty of reconstructing the logical pathway leading to the decision. The issue therefore
concerns not merely efficiency, but the compatibility of automation with the fundamental principles of the
Rule of Law: transparency, reasoning, reviewability, adversarial process, and the right to evidence.
Civil society is positioned between two paradigms: the one described by Dario Amodei in “The Adolescence
of Technology” (2026), and the one outlined by Andrea Pignataro in “The Wrong Apocalypse” (2026). Both
contributions suggest that humanity is entering a “site of passage” in which AI systems may pose
civilizational risks. In this same perspective, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas states that AI
must be “disarmed”, meaning that technology should be prevented from dominating humanity and restored
to public discussion and debate.
Moreover, contemporary risk derives not only from a lack of control, but also from an excess of compliance.
The proliferation of monitoring, reporting, and self-assessment obligations may generate forms of
organisational over-administration in which preventive governance progressively compresses evaluative
discretion and economic freedom within increasingly standardised models of conformity.
It is precisely here that the notion of “good administration” assumes a central role. Risk governance cannot
be reduced to a merely technocratic instrument of social control. It must remain anchored to the principles of
proportionality, legitimate expectation, accountability, and legal certainty that constitute the foundations of
the European legal tradition. Likewise, cooperative tax compliance cannot degenerate into a system of
permanent corporate surveillance, but must preserve its nature as a collaborative relationship founded upon
mutual trust between taxpayers and public authorities.
Within this evolving legal and institutional framework, the project intends to develop a coordinated and
interdisciplinary analysis of the transformation of contemporary legal systems within the “risk society”, with
particular regard to ESG governance, tax-risk management, artificial intelligence, and extraordinary
corporate transactions.
To this end, the research will combine comparative legal analysis, jurisprudential and regulatory
assessment, and the examination of practical governance models adopted both by public administrations
and private economic operators. The project adopts an interdisciplinary methodology integrating tax law,
corporate governance, European Union law, sustainability studies, administrative law, and digital regulation.
The research activities will be organised through complementary research units, each entrusted with the
investigation of a specific dimension of contemporary risk governance while maintaining a common scientific
and methodological framework. Such articulation ensures both methodological coherence and genuine
interdisciplinarity, allowing the project to analyse risk as a legal, organisational, technological, and economic phenomenon operating across multiple normative levels.
Special consideration will therefore be given to the interaction between ESG governance and tax-risk
management, the increasing use of algorithmic and AI-assisted decision-making systems, the evolution of
cooperative compliance models, the role of extraordinary corporate transactions, and the compatibility
between preventive governance systems and the principles of the European Rule of Law.
Ultimately, the project seeks to determine whether contemporary preventive governance models may
preserve transparency, accountability, proportionality, and legal safeguards within increasingly digitalised
and risk-oriented economic systems. From this perspective, the “risk society” does not merely represent a
sociological category descriptive of modernity, but becomes the very terrain upon which the contemporary
legal order’s capacity to preserve the balance between technology, market, and fundamental rights is tested.
marginal occurrence into an intrinsic component of social organisation. Modern society is increasingly
immersed in a dimension in which risk no longer constitutes merely an accidental consequence, but rather
the permanent framework within which public institutions and economic operators make strategic decisions.
Technological development, the financialisation of the economy, the globalisation of markets, and the
digitalisation of administrative and business relations have generated new forms of risk - often invisible,
systemic, and not entirely foreseeable absent specifically designed oversight mechanisms - capable of
extending beyond territorial boundaries and even beyond the regulatory system’s own capacity for control.
This phenomenon was effectively described by Ulrich Beck’s theory of the Risikogesellschaft (“risk society”),
according to which modernity is characterised not only by the production of wealth, but also by the systemic production of global, interconnected, and difficult-to-control risks. From this perspective, risk no longer
represents a merely pathological contingency, but rather the structural condition within which contemporary
societies operate.
What emerges is a progressive shift from the logic of repression to that of governance: a transformation
affecting both public administration and the organisation of private enterprise. The very function of law is
thereby profoundly altered. Law no longer merely regulates completed events; rather, it increasingly seeks to
anticipate the future through preventive and predictive models aimed at managing uncertainty. Prevention
progressively supplants reaction; compliance tends to prevail over sanction; and probabilistic risk
assessment increasingly replaces the traditional ascertainment of facts. Consequently, both administrative
and entrepreneurial activity become subsumed within permanent systems of monitoring, control, and self-
assessment.
It is within this framework that the interdisciplinary research project “The Risk Society between Legal
Governance (ESG) and Extraordinary Corporate Events” is situated.
The central focus of the research lies in the progressive emergence of risk-governance models grounded in
the combination of regulatory instruments, internal organisational systems, and predictive technologies. Risk
management through Model 231, Model 262, cooperative tax compliance programmes, Tax Control
Frameworks, ESG systems, and algorithmic decision-making tools all represent different manifestations of a
common phenomenon: the construction of mechanisms designed to govern the economic and legal
uncertainty permeating contemporary economic activity. Within this context also falls the recent evolution of the European framework governing corporate
sustainability reporting and sustainability due diligence. Such developments do not signal a retreat from the
ESG paradigm; rather, they reveal the need to reconcile sustainability objectives with principles of
proportionality, effectiveness, and organisational sustainability of compliance obligations, thereby
demonstrating how compliance itself may become - where excessively burdensome or overly formalised - an
autonomous source of risk for undertakings.
In this regard, the most recent European sustainability standards, particularly ESRS G1, attribute increasing
relevance to tax governance, tax-risk management, and fiscal transparency as factors capable of affecting
the reputational and financial sustainability of undertakings. Taxation thus tends to become a structural
component of ESG governance, no longer confined to the mere dimension of tax compliance. Tax risk no
longer consists solely in the danger of future disputes, but evolves into reputational, organisational, and
ESG-related risk capable of directly affecting corporate sustainability, access to financial markets, and
institutional trust.
A second major issue concerns the relationship between technology and legal decision-making. The
increasing use of algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence within administrative and corporate
processes radically alters the structure of decision-making itself. Algorithms no longer perform merely
executive functions; rather, they progressively shape the selection of relevant information, the classification
of risks, and the construction of the final judgment. This development is particularly delicate in tax law, where
predictive systems and data-analysis platforms enable tax authorities to elaborate increasingly sophisticated
models for the selection of fiscal risk.
Yet the apparent neutrality of technology risks generating new forms of decisional opacity. Algorithmic risk
does not lie merely in technical error, but in the progressive de-responsibilisation of the human decision-
maker and in the difficulty of reconstructing the logical pathway leading to the decision. The issue therefore
concerns not merely efficiency, but the compatibility of automation with the fundamental principles of the
Rule of Law: transparency, reasoning, reviewability, adversarial process, and the right to evidence.
Civil society is positioned between two paradigms: the one described by Dario Amodei in “The Adolescence
of Technology” (2026), and the one outlined by Andrea Pignataro in “The Wrong Apocalypse” (2026). Both
contributions suggest that humanity is entering a “site of passage” in which AI systems may pose
civilizational risks. In this same perspective, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas states that AI
must be “disarmed”, meaning that technology should be prevented from dominating humanity and restored
to public discussion and debate.
Moreover, contemporary risk derives not only from a lack of control, but also from an excess of compliance.
The proliferation of monitoring, reporting, and self-assessment obligations may generate forms of
organisational over-administration in which preventive governance progressively compresses evaluative
discretion and economic freedom within increasingly standardised models of conformity.
It is precisely here that the notion of “good administration” assumes a central role. Risk governance cannot
be reduced to a merely technocratic instrument of social control. It must remain anchored to the principles of
proportionality, legitimate expectation, accountability, and legal certainty that constitute the foundations of
the European legal tradition. Likewise, cooperative tax compliance cannot degenerate into a system of
permanent corporate surveillance, but must preserve its nature as a collaborative relationship founded upon
mutual trust between taxpayers and public authorities.
Within this evolving legal and institutional framework, the project intends to develop a coordinated and
interdisciplinary analysis of the transformation of contemporary legal systems within the “risk society”, with
particular regard to ESG governance, tax-risk management, artificial intelligence, and extraordinary
corporate transactions.
To this end, the research will combine comparative legal analysis, jurisprudential and regulatory
assessment, and the examination of practical governance models adopted both by public administrations
and private economic operators. The project adopts an interdisciplinary methodology integrating tax law,
corporate governance, European Union law, sustainability studies, administrative law, and digital regulation.
The research activities will be organised through complementary research units, each entrusted with the
investigation of a specific dimension of contemporary risk governance while maintaining a common scientific
and methodological framework. Such articulation ensures both methodological coherence and genuine
interdisciplinarity, allowing the project to analyse risk as a legal, organisational, technological, and economic phenomenon operating across multiple normative levels.
Special consideration will therefore be given to the interaction between ESG governance and tax-risk
management, the increasing use of algorithmic and AI-assisted decision-making systems, the evolution of
cooperative compliance models, the role of extraordinary corporate transactions, and the compatibility
between preventive governance systems and the principles of the European Rule of Law.
Ultimately, the project seeks to determine whether contemporary preventive governance models may
preserve transparency, accountability, proportionality, and legal safeguards within increasingly digitalised
and risk-oriented economic systems. From this perspective, the “risk society” does not merely represent a
sociological category descriptive of modernity, but becomes the very terrain upon which the contemporary
legal order’s capacity to preserve the balance between technology, market, and fundamental rights is tested.