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EU2020 must prioritise corporate accountability<\/strong><\/p>\n The business activities of multinational corporations influence almost every aspect of development in our societies. Unfortunately, this influence is not always positive. From mercury poisoning in South Africa to child labour in India, company breaches of environmental and human rights standards have revealed systemic failings in the operation of many companies -including European ones- that have resulted in environmental and social harm over many years. The ongoing economic and financial crises have further underlined the interdependence A new sustainable social market economy, as is currently outlined in the EU2020 consultation document, must also include concrete policy proposals to address this situation. Unethical operations of European companies have adverse systemic effects in their own national markets as well as in the EU internal market. Currently, the situation in the internal market is such that responsible businesses are competitively disadvantaged and forced to follow the same path and relocate or outsource their production. This contributes to undesired patterns in This is clearly not in line with the principle of creating value nor with the promotion of European values. The new Internal Market Commissioner-designate, Michel Barnier, insisted during his hearing in the European Parliament on the 13th of January for men and women to be at the heart of the EU internal market. He also stressed the need for the EU internal market to be at the service of citizens, and not the other way around. The EU2020 document also underscores this point very clearly: \u201cwe need a new agenda that puts people and responsibility first.\u201d This can only happen if the EU2020 agenda takes into account the indispensable role that corporate accountability and CSR must play in ensuring a more competitive economy but also to ensure that the achievement of EU’s social, economic and environmental goals go hand in hand.<\/p>\n As stated in the Commission staff working document accompanying the European Competitiveness Report of 20081 \u201cCSR needs to be part of core business strategy if it is to be a competitive differentiator. In this way CSR can also help to strengthen the European social model (\u2026) Enterprises in which CSR remains a peripheral concern, mainly confined to public relations functions, are likely to miss opportunities for competitiveness gains\u201d. That same document states that CSR can make a valuable contribution to the goals of the European Growth and Read the whole submission by downloading the attachment below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EU2020 must prioritise corporate accountability The business activities of multinational corporations influence almost every aspect of development in our societies. Unfortunately, this influence is not always positive. From mercury poisoning in South Africa to child labour in India, company breaches of environmental and human rights standards have revealed systemic failings in the operation of many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof our globalised world. Today, EU legal frameworks fail to regulate this vicious influence in order to protect public interests against undesired adverse impacts of corporate operations.<\/p>\n
\nmarket development, such as disadvantaging small enterprises or hampering required systemic shifts to a low carbon economy. The financial markets furthermore reward companies for the aforementioned additional profits that are reflected in the value of their shares, limiting investors’ interest in other companies.<\/p>\n
\nJobs strategy. Thus, EU2020 being the continuation of that very strategy, really falls short if it does not consider corporate accountability and CSR at its core.<\/p>\n