EU communication on corporate social responsibility and the effects on national and corporate sustainability agendas

Recent EU communications on sustainable development goals have declared how corporations should respond to political and societal demands through socially responsible business practices. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a more widely used and controversial term, which attempts to cover business involvement on meeting social and environmental requirements. We discuss how the EU communication affects corporate policies on CSR in the light of sustainable development. The most recent steps that the EU Commission has made on CSR are traced, and its reflection on national and corporate levels are discussed. This study will focus on companies in three European countries, namely Hungary, Germany and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, three companies were selected from each country in the Oil & Gas and/or Energy industry sectors to observe how certain policies have been adopted and influenced corporate behaviour (as seen in financial reports and CSR reports). The companies CSR policies will be evaluated according to Welfords (2005) 20 elements of CSR, which are based on similar communications of international codes and conventions, such as the ILO convention, and UN Global Compact that the EU Commission has adopted.