Brussels, 29/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - With the European corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy coming to an end, the European Commission is seeking advice to dertermine what will be its next steps in this area. The European Executive opened a public consultation on the subject on Tuesday 29 April, which will run until 15 August.
In 2011, a programme was launched to shore up corporate social and environmental responsibility, in order to improve the competitiveness of businesses, amongst other things. This strategy will continue to apply until the end of the year and European Commissioner for the Internal Market Michel Barnier is already thinking about its successor. He states that CSR increasingly aims to “create new value through the innovation that comes from challenging the company's status quo and looking for better solutions”. The public consultation will allow stakeholders to evaluate the success - or otherwise - of the outgoing strategy and give their opinion on the Commission's role in this area. The Commission needs to improve the self-regulation and co-regulation processes still further and promote CSR and best practice to businesses (projects and prices, for instance), as well as the transparency of businesses in environmental and social matters. Respondents are invited to determine whether the objectives of the strategy have been achieved and what initiatives should be taken in the future.
On the basis of the responses it receives, the Commission will publish an initial technical report at the end of the summer, which will inform the debates of the plenary meeting of the CSR Multistakeholder Forum, to be held at the end of this year. This forum, which brings together businesses, unions, NGOs and other stakeholders, will prepare the future direction of the post-2014 European CSR policy. (MD)