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In recent years the EU has committed itself to a number of core strategies to shape Europe’s future. The Lisbon strategy, the sustainability strategy, and integration of an enlarged Union can by their nature become effective if they are implemented not only by the EU institutions, but…

In recent years the EU has committed itself to a number of core strategies to shape Europe’s future. The Lisbon strategy, the sustainability strategy, and integration of an enlarged Union can by their nature become effective if they are implemented not only by the EU institutions, but if they become overarching principles by economic actors and civil society. It seems thus advisable to examine whether non-state actors, in particular companies, can be drawn upon more effectively in the implementation of these political strategies and goals. Corporate Social Responsibility is a promising concept in this respect: CSR holds the potential to stimulate corporate contributions to the implementation and integration of the above mentioned EU strategies. The Lisbon Strategy, the Gothenburg Sustainability Strategy and EU enlargement belong to the most important long-term strategic goals that the European Union has set itself in the past decade. However, they are only loosely integrated and their implementation meets major challenges.

Provide sistematic answer to the following three challenges in term of policy recommendations:

  • Challenge 1: Can CSR contribute to competitiveness?
  • Challenge 2: Whether (and how) CSR contributes to the closer integration of new Member States into the European Union.
  • Challenge 3, which constitutes the goal of CORE series of Conferences, investigates how CSR may link up with policy integration on the political level. The discourse on environmental policy integration that focuses on public policy actors is not currently linked to the analysis of how companies systematically integrate non-business concerns into their operations. Company-level integration of diverging logics can potentially contribute to policy integration on the political level and to overcoming target conflicts in EU strategies

The fourth and closing conference of the project was organized in Berlin during the summer 2009 and a final document has been published including all the conclusions and remarks about CORE research.