In a globalized economy, promoting corporate environmental responsibility is a major challenge. International organizations have gradually established normative frameworks and regulatory authorities to hold companies accountable for their environmental impacts before transnational audiences. For two years, we studied the regulatory body set up by the oecd to enforce its guidelines for multinationals. Here, we demonstrate that this regulator only partly addresses current environmental issues. Its institutional architecture compromises its independence, and its extraterritorial mandate fails to consider environmental issues in their totality.