25.08.2013 Aufrufe

Nachhaltiges Europa Abschlusspublikation - Global Marshall Plan

Nachhaltiges Europa Abschlusspublikation - Global Marshall Plan

Nachhaltiges Europa Abschlusspublikation - Global Marshall Plan

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<strong>Nachhaltiges</strong> <strong>Europa</strong><br />

48<br />

cation system that, if reproduced globally, will<br />

have huge social impact.<br />

To be credible, global companies' social responsibility<br />

efforts must show that the companies have<br />

harnessed their ample resources to benefit society.<br />

Some may argue that corporations have no<br />

business expending resources on activities that<br />

lack a profit motive. That is short-sighted. If consumers<br />

believe that global companies must shoulder<br />

greater social responsibility, executives do not<br />

have much of a choice, do they?<br />

What can we do?<br />

The harsh effects of short term reactions to globalisation<br />

can be mitigated in two main ways:<br />

• private actions: consumer intolerance of poor<br />

supply chain conditions – CSR companies realising<br />

behaving responsibly is enlightened self-interest.<br />

• governance, institutional, rules and frameworks:<br />

prosperity drags up standards, international<br />

agreements push standards up, trade and<br />

other incentives provide some push.<br />

And against that background the EU has a<br />

Sustainable Development strategy framework with<br />

a host of individual actions that are pushing in the<br />

same direction.<br />

But ultimately it comes back to borders – you can<br />

no longer aim for a sustainable „wohlhabendere<br />

und gerechtere Gesellschaft” behind the protective<br />

borders of nation or region, whilst the rest of the<br />

world goes hang. <strong>Global</strong>ization means that you<br />

have to be concerned about economic and social<br />

conditions everywhere. You have to be concerned<br />

to build a society that others will want to emulate<br />

and reproduce. It’s largely happening. Exclusive-<br />

ness is out.<br />

How to do it?<br />

The Commission believes that three major imbal-<br />

ances result from the acceleration of the globalisation<br />

process:<br />

• imbalance between the rapid process of liber-<br />

alisation and the time necessary to elaborate the<br />

international regulatory framework for these exchanges;<br />

• imbalance between the advanced governance<br />

systems in industrialised countries, and the lack of<br />

such governance in developing countries as well as<br />

at international level;<br />

• imbalance between the highly developed economic<br />

pillars of global governance (IMF, World<br />

Bank, WTO) and the embryonic state of the social<br />

and environmental pillars of such a system.<br />

“Classical” trade measures such as duties, levies<br />

and quotas are on the way out, but procedures,<br />

rules and norms play an ever-greater role.<br />

1. On the private action side Corporate Social<br />

Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby companies<br />

integrate social and environmental concerns<br />

in their business activities and in interaction<br />

with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis<br />

("triple bottom line"). Voluntary social and environmental<br />

practices of business, going beyond<br />

companies' existing legal obligations, can play a<br />

major role in filling the governance gap in an innovative<br />

way. CSR is not a substitute, but a complement<br />

to hard law. As such it must not be<br />

detrimental to public authorities' task to establish<br />

binding rules, at domestic and/or at international<br />

level, for the respect of certain minimum social<br />

and environmental standards.<br />

There has been some debate in this respect about<br />

whether voluntary or binding instruments are<br />

called for, latterly this debate has moved on to-<br />

wards the broader challenge of devising reporting<br />

tools and verification mechanisms to ensure that<br />

companies are doing what they say they are<br />

doing. If they do not do what they say they are<br />

doing and if this becomes known, there are plenty<br />

of you out there who will make their life uncom-<br />

fortable until they do better.<br />

Corporate Social Responsibility is a business contribution<br />

to Sustainable Development. In a<br />

development context, it provides a tool to reach<br />

the Millennium Development Goals and contributes<br />

to poverty reduction and Sustainable Development.<br />

CSR is however not a substitute but a com-<br />

plement to norms. CSR is a useful tool in “harnessing<br />

globalisation”, which can be used in combination<br />

with international and domestic regula-<br />

tions. Corporate Social Responsibility elements in<br />

trade instruments are progressively developed.<br />

The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises<br />

that were fully renewed in 2000 are part of the<br />

global architecture of CSR policy tools and have a<br />

special role to play since they allow a certain levelplaying<br />

field and involve public authorities in their<br />

implementation mechanism.<br />

2. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises<br />

also play a significant role. In 2000, a<br />

number of drivers were pushing for the amelioration<br />

of the Guidelines:<br />

– The Commissioner for Trade wanted to work to-<br />

wards a “globalisation with a human face”. This<br />

implied assessing the impact of trade policies,<br />

which further developed into the systematisation<br />

of Sustainable Impact Assessments (SIAs), and

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