A campaign to make the public more aware of socially responsible business practice is to be run by the European Commission.
Officials believe that greater public understanding of how some
companies are meeting their social and environmental responsibilities
will put the spotlight on those doing little or nothing. They want the
programme to stress how people can ‘influence the behaviour of
enterprises through their decisions as employees, consumers and
investors’.
Tenders for a 12-month feasibility study must be in by 13 September,
with the winning bid likely to be from a consultancy or
non-governmental body.
The study will consider the best way to get the message across to the
public and ‘how to help [people] learn to find and use information
about the social impact of products, services and investments’.
As part of the campaign, a pilot CSR exhibition for the public in Brussels is planned.
In a related project, the Commission is also expected to set up an open access
website with content drawn from the sustainability reports of large
European companies. The site will feature all European companies that
have more than 1000 employees and publish a non-financial report.
Large European companies that do not publish reports will be named.
There will also be information on every company’s affiliation to social
and environmental schemes and networks, awards received, and whether
they are listed in any socially responsible investment indexes. Several
organizations in the sustainability reporting field will be invited to
join an advisory committee.
The database, which the Commission hopes will publicize how European
companies are meeting their social responsibilities and will promote
sustainability reporting, is in part a response to recent calls from
the European Union’s Economic and Social Committee for an ‘information
portal on CSR practices adopted by large enterprises’. The demand was
made in a recently published opinion of the committee entitled
Information and measurement instruments for CSR in a globalized economy.
The Commission will be looking for a contractor to develop and run the
database, but has postponed its tendering process until the
publication of its long-awaited white paper on CSR, expected shortly.
