European heads of government are to back a major business-led campaign aimed at persuading companies to take corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues more seriously.
The autumn campaign will be based on 12 ‘proposals for action’ put forward by business leaders to the European Council at its Lisbon summit on social cohesion in late March. It will call on European companies to start making significant progress, in particular, on equal opportunities, social inclusion and sustainable development.
The campaign will be led by the European Business Network for Social Cohesion (EBNSC), a Brussels-based grouping of more than 25 European businesses committed to improving their social and environmental performance, and the Copenhagen Centre, a study centre for CSR issues set up by the Danish government in 1998.
Over the next five years they aim to mobilise more than half a million business people ‘to embrace a common set of principles, practices and tools of corporate social responsibility and to create new partnerships’. The launch of the initiative will be in Brussels on 9 November at the European business convention on CSR (organised by the EBNSC and the Copenhagen Centre), and is expected to be supported by heads of European governments, European Union officials and around 400 business executives.
Advance backing for the campaign came from several European leaders at the Lisbon summit, including the prime ministers of Portugal (Antonio Guterres), Belgium (Guy Verhofstadt), Denmark (Poul Nyrup Rasmussen), and the UK (Tony Blair), as well as German chancellor Gerhard Schr–der and European Commission president Romano Prodi.
Governments were presented with the campaign’s 12 proposals for action by chief executives from a delegation of companies including Grundfos, IBM Europe, Johnson & Johnson, Portugal Telecom, Société Générale de Belgique and Volkswagen.
Among a wide range of ideas, the 12 proposals for action call on governments and companies to work together to:
create a ‘coherent and integrated’ system of CSR case studies on the internet
encourage companies to assess the impact and business benefits of their social performance and to undertake voluntary social reporting
develop a European initiative to encourage universities and business schools to ‘create, expand and diversify’ executive courses in CSR
organise regular meetings between governments and businesses on social cohesion
encourage the financial sector to widen access to its services and promote socially responsible investing.
The proposals, which were developed over the past few months at the request of the Portuguese government, are available on the Copenhagen Centre web site at www.copenhagencentre.org.
Jens Erik Lund of the Copenhagen Centre claimed the campaign would be a big step forward because it was backed by governments and business leaders prepared to act as equal partners.
EBNSC spokesman Jan Noterdaerne said: ‘We hope this will help further the dialogue between government, business and civil society and foster innovative partnerships where employment, growth and social cohesion go hand in hand.’
