Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Corporate social responsibility refers to businesses taking responsibility for their behaviour and its impact on society. This can include employment conditions and labour standards, freedom of association, well-being at work, non-discrimination and gender balance, stakeholder engagement, human rights, preventing environmental harm, including reducing emissions and pollution, and eliminating bribery and corruption.

CSR is considered important for competitiveness and has been shown to yield benefits in terms of risk management, cost savings, access to capital, customer relationships, human resource management and innovation capacity.

The European Commission’s 2011 CSR strategy urged companies to set up procedures to ‘integrate social, environmental, ethical human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders’.

Since then, the EU has demonstrated its commitment to CSR, the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda for sustainable development and UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, including by:

publishing documents such as its communication ‘Next steps for a sustainable European future — European action for sustainability’;
adopting legislation such as Directive 2014/95/EU on the disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by large companies and groups;
supporting international initiatives such as the International Labour Organization’s principles concerning multinational enterprises and social policy, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s work on due diligence.