A consortium of Europe’s leading organisations in the fields of corporate responsibility and competitiveness has welcomed the emphasis placed by the European Commission on promoting responsible business practices as a driver of the region’s competitiveness.
The consortium, which includes AccountAbility, ESADE, the European Policy Centre (EPC) and INSEAD, has launched an initiative focused on how to accelerate and amplify this link in three of Europe’s leading business sectors: finance, information and communication technologies, and pharmaceuticals.

The link between corporate responsibility and national and regional competitiveness is demonstrated by AccountAbility’s recent ground-breaking report, ‘Responsible Competitiveness’, launched in Shanghai in December 2005, and simultaneously in Warsaw through the European Academy of Business in Society. The report highlights Europe’s lead in advancing responsible business practices as a long-term competitive advantage, and includes an index covering 80 countries which, for the first time, measures the relationship between corporate social responsibility and economic competitiveness.

An executive summary of the report can be downloaded at www.accountability.org.uk/rc.