10.02.2015
Conference on corporate social responsibility
Voluntary guidelines or binding requirements? This tension was the focus of a conference on corporate social responsibility. At the invitation of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, project manager Miriam Schaper represented the Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik at the Reichstag in Berlin.
The background to the conference, entitled “Corporate Human Rights and Social Responsibility – Towards Binding Rules”, is that the European Commission has called on all EU Member States to draw up a national action plan to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The Hamburger Stiftung für Wirtschaftsethik is supporting the two-year process of drawing up the National Action Plan, for which the Federal Foreign Office is the lead agency.
How can a voluntary approach lead to effective action? What legal hurdles must be taken into account when it comes to legally enshrined rules? Or is a successful mix ultimately the best solution? These and other questions were discussed between members of the Bundestag and representatives from industry, the legal sector and civil society. The findings from the discussion in Berlin are also being incorporated into the Foundation’s projects, which analyse the relationship between self-regulatory instruments and legally binding rules.