Council of Europe

Towards a Europe of Shared Social Responsibilities: Challenges and Strategies (Trends in Social Cohesion N°23) (14/10/2011) Council of Europe

The need to develop collective skills to acquire a shared long-term vision and to manage change is evident, given that resources are limited and there is no such thing as complete independence or immunity from the damaging effects of other people's acts or failures to act. Current trends are having a significant effect on both the scope and the substance of specific responsibilities, individual or collective, voluntary or statutory. In addition, extreme interdependence exacerbates the differences between values, concepts of well-being and interests, potentially giving rise to mutually destructive conflicts, wastage of resources and externally negative consequences. Hence the Council of Europe's proposal to adopt the concept of shared social responsibility as a vital adjunct to specific responsibilities to make them more meaningful. In accordance with this concept, which is the subject of a charter addressed to governments and to all stakeholders, all parties are encouraged to practise transparency and to account for their acts in a context of knowledge and decision making shaped by dialogue and interaction. This work on shared social responsibility considers, among other things, how to ensure that all stakeholders are recognized, make deliberation and co-production legitimate tools of democratic decision making and activate multi-player, multi-level and multi-sector processes of innovation and learning. It also examines the question of how to foster the emergence of institutional mechanisms which can restore confidence in politics and in the action of all the parties concerned.