European Union: From the Green Paper to the European Alliance on CSR

From the perspective of the European Union (EU), the justification for the support it lends to CSR lies in the fact that it regards it as the contribution of business to sustainable development. As a business strategy, CSR is directly linked to the achievement of the strategic objective established in the Final Declaration of the Lisbon European Council (March 2000): by 2010, ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. Each sector of society can contribute to this strategic objective from its own activity, characteristics and capacities. In this context, CSR expresses the engagement of the business sector in the construction of a Europe characterised by sustainable economic development and social cohesion. The EC considers that companies can, by incorporating CSR into their business values, practices and policies, at least help to minimise the negative social and environmental consequences of their activity, thus contributing to the objective mentioned above.