Association of Corporate Social Responsibility (Kurumsal Sosyal Sorumluluk Dernegi) in Turkey aims to develop awareness of social responsibility both at local and national level to achieve sustainable development and social justice. They did an interview with me for the July issue of their monthly Bulletin. This month's theme is Corporate Social Responsibility and the European Union. I decided to post the questions and answers on my blog as separate entries.
Question: Do you find European Union's perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility sufficient?
You can approach this question from different angles considering European Union is consisted of different countries and very different political tendencies. Implementation level of CSR in each region can vary. UK’s private sector leadership on this issue is very clear. CSR strategies of many large and small companies are integrated with business strategies of companies as much as possible. The biggest reason is the high expectations of UK consumers on this issue. Corporations in other large countries are also implementing important strategies in CSR but those have not been integrated into the overall strategy of the corporations as in the UK. I think European Union is the world leader in terms of implementing legislations to encourage corporations and support CSR implementation. European Commission responsible for Industry and Competition has done extensive work in this area. For example, 2006 dated recommendation report aims to make Europe a center of attraction for CSR. In addition, targets for reduction of environmental impact and release of carbon emissions are quite ambitious. Those targets increase legal obligations of corporations and encourage them to make voluntary investments beyond the legal requirements as well.
The European Union is in the forefront of CSR regarding the reduction of environmental impact of economic activity and issues such as the production of environmentally friendly products. There are good examples of social projects of course, but in general, European countries have very high tax rates and the social state tradition is very strong. This makes people and corporations think that supporting people who are in need is the duty of the state. As a reflection of this in Europe most of the social projects are designed for helping less developed countries in Africa or Latin America. It is also a fact that there is increase of projects within European countries in recent years aiming the social integration of migrant population.
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