Global Public Policy Institute
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E-Mail gppi@gppi.net
29 August 2006
GPPi op-ed on European Alliance for CSR published by Handelsblatt
GPPi Associate Directors Thorsten Benner and Jan Martin Witte published an op-ed commenting on the new "European Alliance for CSR" in the leading German business daily Handelsblatt. They criticize that this new initiative launched by the EU Commission in March 2006 takes the CSR debate in the wrong direction. Benner and Witte argue that the new alliance lacks clear principles and rules of engagement and will therefore undermine the credibility of CSR initiatives. Companies serious about CSR should prevent business associations from lobbying for ill-defined lowest common denominator approaches such as the new European Alliance. EU member states (and Germany in particular during it dual EU/G8 presidency in 2007) should correct this trend and support principled CSR initiatives that go beyond the à la carte approach embodied by the European Alliance.
To download the article, please click here.