The Merger of Corporate Social Responsibility into the EU Common Commercial Policy

Since the 2001 Green Paper on 'Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)', the EU committed to a CSR policy through a set of initiatives that have been implemented in external trade agreements with respect to both the 'internal' dimension of CSR, that is, labour standards, and the 'external' one, that is, other ethical standards, including environmental protection.' In particular, through Communication 347 of 2 July 2002, the Commission set the goal of making the EU a pole of excellence as to CSR, and this approach has been recently renewed in Communication 681 of 25 October 2011. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, a new Common Commercial Policy (CCP) has also been adopted, making it possible for the European Parliament to put forward an advanced CSR policy through Resolution 2009/2201, concerning 'CSR in International Trade Agreements', adopted on 25 November 2010. The present paper aims to explore how the EU envisages integrating its ambitious CSR policy within the new CCP. Given that environmental sustainability is a crucial issue in this context, the analysis concentrates especially on the balance between commerce, environment and climate change. Thus, this article explores the merger of the EU CSR into the EU CCP as it is shaped by the Lisbon Treaty, with a specific focus on environmental issues. Though the legal categorization of environmental protection is subject to evolution, this paper assumes that such protection can be regarded as a fundamental right, at least within the EU, in light of Article 37 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.