Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-12-Speech-1-093"
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"en.20070312.18.1-093"2
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"Mr President, companies, politicians and above all people understand that the problems of world poverty and of environmental degradation remain stubbornly prevalent in today’s world. For ten years, many companies have begun to examine how they can manage their own social and environmental impacts through initiatives for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Business cannot be expected to take responsibility alone for meeting these challenges. However, it is now time for the communications, the conferences and the codes of conduct to begin to make a significant and measurable difference and a move from process to outcome.
In this vote, the European Parliament will draw attention to the limitations of voluntary CSR reporting and of social auditing as it exists today. We will say that the drive for ever lower prices can prejudice fair treatment for people at work. We will insist that CSR can only work by adopting a multi-stakeholder approach, internationally-agreed standards and independent monitoring and verification. We will call for actions to tackle corporate abuses in the world’s developing countries and to provide means for redress for its victims.
The Commission’s communications seem to me to opt out of this debate, to prescribe an ‘anything goes’ approach to CSR and to risk Europe falling behind, compared with the rest of the world. However, tonight I am not proposing that we reject the Commission’s approach. Indeed, I am asking the European Parliament to contribute constructively by seeking to rewrite some of the agenda and, where the Commission is making commitments, to come forward with detailed recommendations to turn fine words into concrete actions, to give full transparency to the evolving alliance for business, to rebuild confidence in the European multi-stakeholder forum and bring the NGOs back to the table, to make a genuine financial contribution to enabling CSR to grow, to genuinely put into operation support for CSR principles in Commission policies and programmes, including enterprise, employment, corporate governance and, in particular, trade and development programmes.
I know that Commissioners Verheugen and Špidla will not be able to accept all of Parliament’s recommendations tonight. However, I am heartened and grateful for the private meetings I have held with them as this report has evolved. I now call on them publicly to promise that decisive progress
be made on CSR at EU level within the life of this Commission.
I also know that some Members in the debate will seek to oppose the report: I say to them that this report represents a carefully crafted compromise between the political groups. Indeed, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the shadow rapporteur.
The one clear piece of new legislation we will support will be for mandatory environmental and social reporting by business, reiterating our previous position and sending a powerful political signal from this Parliament. All of our other proposals are about more effective use and implementation of the existing regulatory framework and support for voluntary action.
I say to the opponents inside this Parliament and to the one or two associations outside that, in their enthusiasm to block action at EU level, I do not believe that they do justice or genuinely represent the best interests or the best of business when it comes to CSR. Take the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, speaking on behalf of the business leaders’ initiative for human rights, which told us: ‘Minimum standards are essential for a level playing field to be developed in this area’. Take the European Investment and Research Service, who told us: ‘If you can go some way to rekindling the interest of the Commission in a more substantive approach to CSR, that would be most welcome’. Or take the French business confederation MEDEF, speaking of behalf of Business Europe: ‘I want to thank you very much for the quality and the relevance of most of the questions and suggestions put forward by you.’
Now is not the time to retreat. It is time to be ambitious and to show vision and take all of these and others together. One of the key ways we can get greater enthusiasm, dynamism and consensus behind EU action on CSR is by championing it in global institutions and better implementing global CSR initiatives here in Europe. There is also the strategic partnership that I propose between the Commission and the global reporting initiative, a new business dialogue between the EU and Japan on corporate social responsibility, and the use of the fifth anniversary this year of the World Summit on Sustainable Development as an opportunity for us in Europe to lead the international debate for intergovernmental initiatives and corporate accountability, which was agreed at Johannesburg.
When the Commission published its communication it said it wanted Europe to be a pole of excellence for CSR. When I read it I feared that CSR in Europe was instead falling down a black hole. However, if we can agree substantively on many of the recommendations in this Parliament report, I believe that we can make the Commission’s aspiration come true."@en1
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