CSR and the European Integration process:the Italian case

The paper emphasizes the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its development strategies in the European Union (EU). The aim is to understand how the European Union integration impacts on the concrete CSR practices of companies. CSR has gained an increasingly high profile in recent years. The Commission defines corporate social responsibility as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society”. The integration of the European Union (EU) is a complex and ongoing socio-economic and political process which has the aim of creating an ever closer union among the people of Europe. Along with the adoption of the EU’s body of common rights and obligations, the accession countries were called upon to introduce policies on CSR. The paper shows how EU integration affects and interacts with the practice of CSR in the EU Member States using the example of Italy.