Lisbon, 10/03/2000 (Agence Europe) - As we announced (see EUROPE of 8 March, p.14), on Wednesday the President of the European Council, Antonio Guterres received a group of European business leaders who provided him with suggestions for the summit of 23/24 March and assured them that a "strong message to industry" would be included in the summit's conclusions, spurring the sector on to continue and scale-up its best practices in education, life-long learning, entrepreneurship, equal opportunities, industrial changes and sustainable development.
Etienne Davignon, Chairman of Societe Generale de Belgique and the European Business Network for Social Cohesion (EBNSC), said at the meeting that the European Council of Lisbon would be the right moment for governments and the European Commission to recognise that businesses could successfully combine economic competitiveness and social responsibility. According to him, the 500 companies now sharing innovative social practices through EBNSC and the Copenhagen Centre, could form the basis for launching a European-wide campaign, for the period 2000-2005, aimed at: - embracing and enacting "core values" of corporate social responsibility; - targeting 500,000 business people and partners to share and benchmark best practices and management tools; - launching a European Award for "exemplary" business initiatives and partnerships.
Lucio Stanca, Chairman of IBM Europe challenged the EU Council to set a target of 50% of the European population accessing the Internet by 2001. In addition, he offered IBM's experience in supporting education and training for the information society.
Mark Brykman, Chairman of Belgian Shell, for his part, considered that Shell's LiveWIRE programme which has helped more than 120,000 young entrepreneurs start up businesses in the UK alone to be one of many examples that can be successfully replicated.
Finally, Lars Kolind, Chairman of Grundfos and the Copenhagen Centre, invited governments and local authorities to put dialogue with business at the forefront of their agendas and to provide the environment in which "creative socially responsible business practices" can flourish and grow.