中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

From Europe

• To evaluate the level of priority of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reached in China and Europe. CSR is an expression generally recognized to consider the negative externalities of companies’ activities in terms of human rights and environment.

• To highlight the main legal obstacles in China and Europe to give a sense of responsibility to multinational companies for their social and environmental impacts (legal, economic, politic and cultural?)

• To think about the definition of a company: the notion of society contract, of group of companies, the notion of shareholder, limited responsibility, etc…

• To identify the criteria that permit to define the notion of sphere of influence or sphere of responsibility of a company and the correlate liability that lies with in terms of prevention and compensation of its social and environmental impacts.

• To notice the major obstacles to the emergence of harmonized rules enforceable to multinational companies.

• The legal environment of the CSR, expression generally recognised, is complex. In order to reach relevant proposals, a multidisciplinary approach should be adopted. The contract law, investment law, corporate law, competition law, tax law, accounting law, criminal law, civil liability law, labour law, etc are so many legal tools that will be apprehended together, in a view of sustainable development.

Expected results

• To locate the major convergence and divergence points between China and Europe regarding the implementation of adapted rules in terms of CSR.

• To identify, by analysing practical cases, the general criteria that define an abusive corporate behaviour. Such an analysis would permit to establish the red lines of behaviour that could nourish some regulation propositions and some assistance tools to the decision process for the companies.

• To create a network of partners likely to put in common their know-how in order to put in place some China-Europe awareness cycles on CSR aimed at academics, civil society organisations, trade unions, etc… and besides, to proceed to the drafting and diffusion of proposals to regional or international authorities.

• To identify files linking China and Europe able to constitute some cases that illustrate the issues of the workshop and able to permit the implementation of shared legal tools or companies/civil society/authorities partnerships in order to put an end to a litigation situation.