Documents

Since the publication in 2000 of the Social and Economic Council's advisory report De winst van waarden (the translation, Corporate Social Responsibility: A Dutch Approach, was published in 2001), there has been a steady stream of new CSR initiatives. A growing number of companies see CSR as a vital component of modern enterprise, both national and international, and report on their efforts in their annual report or in a separate document. A colourful array of voluntary private and public-private initiatives (including Global Compact) has arisen at all levels - industry national, European, and worldwide.

The Council demands that conditions of employment in the sector concerned be more clearly excluded from the law. The draft bill is intended to improve the regulation of the service sector by reducing unjustified or disproportionate barriers to the exercise of a service activity (as in the creation of an online point of single contact) and providing a more favourable and transparent environment for economic agents so as to encourage the establishment of companies and to generate gains in efficiency, productivity and employment in service activities, as well as increasing the variety and quality of services available to companies and the public. The importance of this draft bill is shown by the fact that the service activities affected by the future law account for 87 per cent of added value in the service sector in Spain and more than 50 per cent of total employment in the Spanish economy.

An organisation that has existed for nearly sixty years can have its own reasons for choosing the theme of 'young' for its annual report. They say people are only as old as they feel. The same goes for organisations. And in 2007 the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands felt very much at home with topics that touched on the role, the place and the task of young people in the world of today and tomorrow.The dialogue with young people keeps organisations and the people in them young at heart and open to change, something crucial to their survival in a rapidly changing world. The 'young' theme could not be ascribed to all of the Council's advisory reports, but the need for sensible adjustment and reform is a common thread running through all the advisory reports published last year. The heated discussions about reform of the law governing the dismissal of employees received more than its share of attention, so that it could easily be forgotten how often the SER also produced unanimous recommendations on important subjects such as labour migration and large cities policy.At times like these, the tradition of consultation in the Netherlands still displays a pleasing vitality even after almost sixty years.