(Brussels, 28 May 2013) CSR Europe and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding outlining their collaboration over the next three years at ‘Is Europe at a turning point for corporate reporting?’, a joint event hosted by CSR Europe and Burson Marsteller. Against the backdrop of the recent EU Commission proposal on non-financial reporting, the event gathered members and partners to hear the voice of stakeholders from across the political spectrum.
Through the enhanced collaboration, CSR Europe and GRI seek to build a productive relationship to exchange information in support of enhanced sustainability management and transparency, delivering on the broader EU goals to build capacity. They will also explore the opportunity to host a European Center of Excellence that could accelerate the awareness and capacity building of companies, investors and governments on integrated performance and reporting.
In line with their mission to make sustainability reporting standard practice, the Memorandum of Understanding between CSR Europe and GRI shows how the present, future and complementary activities of coalitions and networks can work to help the EU and national governments develop an efficient and effective policy that can capitalize on frameworks, best-practice and benchmarks to improve reporting. Such collaboration between GRI and CSR Europe is critical to accelerating impact and alignment.
CSR Europe and GRI are in agreement that any future EU policy should be an effective means of supporting better leadership and management processes in the medium and long-term. At this potential turning point for corporate reporting, both organizations are actively looking forward to the outcome of discussions with European stakeholders for concrete proposals for consideration by the European Commission and the European Parliament to ultimately enable organizations to become more sustainable and contribute to a sustainable global economy.
Stefan Crets, Executive Director of CSR Europe said: ‘’This collaboration ensures that our practical experience, complementary work and positions can best support companies in a very practical way and also give input to the current policy developments on sustainability reporting with the aim of benefitting sustainability reporting as a means towards integrated performance and trust building.’’
Ernst Ligteringen, Chief Executive of GRI, said: “CSR Europe and GRI represent the experience and insights of thousands of companies across Europe that are already reporting on their sustainability performance. The partnership between GRI and CSR Europe will help leverage their expertise, while drawing on the cumulative learning embedded in the GRI Guidelines, so that our two organizations can work with the EU institutions to promote a culture of transparency and accountability across the region.”
Highlighting the risks and opportunities as well as the capacity of companies to comply with future EU legislation for enterprises, the event went some way to broadly enhance the understanding of what stakeholders are doing to support companies with regards to disclosure of non-financial information.