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page 181 chapter VI
sible action, encourage democratic, transparent deci-
sion-making, produce a highly qualified labour force
and promote long-term resource planning. The Lisbon
Strategy favours all this, in that it equips Europe
with a package of guidelines for economic and social
policy for the first time. It moreover offers an innovative
framework for their implementation: national
measures, common targets and joint evaluation of the
results under the direction of the Commission.
Business enterprises are key players in the Lisbon
Strategy. However, neither the European Union nor
the nation states can compel companies to do more
than comply with the minimum social standards. In
addition to tackling the lengthy process of expanding
the laws, they can, however, encourage businesses to
do their bit in order to contribute to the sustainability
of the European social and economic model. For businesses,
this means combining economic efficiency
with social responsibility and environmentally compatible
management. They, too, may not shirk their
responsibility and should be an expression of a forward-looking
Europe.
Being among experts, I need not go any further into
the details of sustainable management and corporate
governance. What I can say, however, is that
sustainability in business has only come to the fore in
the past few years – for instance, after it was noticed
that the best companies in the Dow Jones Index were
those that practised sustainable management. The
re-discovery of the two production factors of human
and social capital began only recently, along with
the realisation that we can only successfully embark