Let me start as the guilty party who first proposed setting up this Multi-Stakeholder Forum and who has served as one of its members since 2002. Can I thank everyone for being here and our Commission colleagues for organizing it. I fundamentally believe that public policy in support of CSR cannot be drawn up like other public policy and should reflect the same multi-stakeholder dialogue that is an integral part of CSR itself. That has been the importance of the work we have all been doing through the two days.

It has been important to re-emphasize some continuing themes that have always been part of our dialogue: genuinely involving small business, CSR as a core part of business strategy, CSR as a source of competitiveness, framework agreements with trade unions and of course the importance of the multi-stakeholder approach itself.

But if this Multi-Stakeholder Forum is to be successful it must be a source of new ideas and respond to the changing context.

There is a very different context now.  The financial crisis where CSR has proven to be of enhanced relevance and not disappeared as the cynics said would happen in an economic downturn.

Then we have the growing power of the BRIC emerging markets and the threat of relative decline for the EU itself.  These make trade and investment increasingly significant in the CSR debate, and the supply chain increasingly crucial to businesses themselves.

And we have in the OECD, the UN and other global fora specific and important developments where Europe can be a leader in driving up standards and in applying them, or it can risk falling behind.

So I've listened carefully to the discussions of the past two days and tried to formulate these remarks as late as possible. Let me suggest four concrete action points which reflect Commissioner Andor's commitment to what he called 'a new and modern EU CSR policy framework'.

First, I think we should welcome and endorse Commissioner Barnier's openness to new requirements for non-financial disclosure.  This matches the position of the European Parliament for more than a decade. The French parliament actually mandated their government to pursue this in European law.  The new Danish law shows that it does not have to put unacceptable burdens on business - with no less than 91 per cent of Danish businesses supporting the law.  I ask all of you and those with whom you work to respond positively to the European Commission's public consultation. I want to ask leading companies in the room not just to respond on behalf of yourselves or your sector, but why not get together with your stakeholders to formulate a joint response?  This could help us in building a consensus towards what follows. And I hope we will all heed the contributions during the Forum from the Global Reporting Initiative and from the Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability initiative - and that a firm EU proposal comes forward on ESG reporting which is a decisive step in Europe towards the goal of Integrated Reporting by companies worldwide by 2020.

Second, EU countries have supported the Ruggie mandate in the UN and have adopted it in the EU Council of Ministers. European and global business has been very supportive of his framework. Now we should have a concerted effort to implement it here in the EU. I congratulate DG Enterprise for supporting the new Edinburgh Study and again the challenge for the Commission is to use these to develop firm proposals to fill the legal gaps which are identified in the study. On perhaps the most difficult issue of extraterritoriality and access to justice, remember John Ruggie specifically addressed us on this when he came to the Swedish Presidency Conference and we cannot afford to ignore this issue just because it is hard.

Third, whether it is supporting an enhanced role for National Contact Points in the OECD Guidelines Update, recognising the launch of the new European network of the UN Global Compact or promoting the new ISO 26,000 - let alone thousands of private and voluntary initiatives by business and through multi-.stakeholder platforms - we should see there is a very crowded global marketplace in CSR. There is no one size fits all for CSR. But I do hope the new Commission Communication in CSR when it is published will re-adopt the principle of 'convergence' in CSR.  So that the EU seeks to help a process of collaboration and 'fit' between different voluntary initiatives, which in doing so will strengthen their application. And by the way the new definition of CSR in ISO 26,000 and Ruggie's commitment to a 'smart mix', really do make the old voluntary versus regulatory debates outdated. It is time for all of us to move on.

And fourth, no business is successful without good Research and Development and we have to ensure good R & D for CSR too. As much as I want to do more than study more studies, click on more websites, formulate in more fora, and labour in more laboratories, I do acknowledge the need to create space for more collaborative projects in specific sectors in the EU level to foster innovation in CSR. And I do hope that we will also move from researching the number of companies engaging in CSR to measuring the outcome of what companies are doing in CSR. We research the impact of macro-economics and should put new emphasis on the macro-impact of CSR by EU business in terms of, for example, tonnes of carbon emissions reduced, children in schools rather than the workplace or increased diversity in the workforce.

Finally, my appeal to you is to continue to follow our work on CSR at the European level and as members of this Forum to take ownership for this work. There have been many projects and initiatives presented over the last two days and perhaps too little time for dialogue on how we can work together to take these forward? Perhaps there needs to be some bridge between the Coordinating Committee and the full meeting of the Forum itself in order to facilitate that continuing dialogue? If Europe is to be a 'pole of excellence' on CSR, we have to deliberate on where the EU itself can make a significant contribution to CSR and then give leadership in the world in exercising it. I have identified four such priorities today and I invite you to continue the journey with us in this task.

I'm not sure if Cancun is going to succeed or fail this week, but is our responsibility to make sure Brussels - this Forum - does.