Public Policy

comment

The European Business Network for Social Cohesion started in response to a call in 1995 from Jacques Delors, then Commission president, for companies to get involved in the work of the EU on combating unemployment and other causes of social exclusion. While the number of active companies is still small and an acceptance of business participation still patchy, the EBNSC has come a long way in a short time.

Anyone from the UK listening to the debates of organisations like the employers federation, UNICE, the ETUC and the Commission, as well as individual national governments, experiences a sense of time-warp, back ten years. Where to draw the boundaries between the state, the private sector, individuals and communities? Is the social market and the Rhineland model still viable? How can pensions and the welfare state be funded? The tide of Euro-scepticism in the UK risks letting a real opportunity to influence that debate go by default.

Just as the UK differs from the US, corporate citizenship on the continent will not replicate the UK model: more focused on partnership with government programmes, more concerned about direct economic questions like unemployment and not just the social consequences, less driven by the need to protect and enhance corporate reputation. Given the near-zero starting point, there is also a tremendous opportunity to skip the philanthropic phase and move straight to a business case rationale. Now is the time for UK-based community affairs managers to assist their continental counterparts.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 33 - April, 1997