This paper contains the keynote speech delivered on December 6th, 2010 by Eddy Wymeersch, Chairman of the European Corporate Governance Institute at the Xth Corporate Governance Conference, Brussels. Apart from an overview on corporate governance elements in different EU work streams, it calls attention to the link between corporate governance and short termism, the questions raised by the increasing tension between government regulation and the corporate governance codes, and finally the new focus on the shareholders, both in EU initiatives and in the UK, where the stewardship code has received much attention.