Stakeholder relations
Not only external stakeholders such as customers, suppliers and business partners, NGOs, political representatives, investors, competitors and committees, but also internal stakeholder groups such as the employees of METRO place various demands on our company at the local and international levels. By taking part in economic and sociopolitical discourse and working with our stakeholder groups, we are in a position to identify their requirements concerning our activities early on, to address relevant issues, and continuously check the goals we are pursuing. The regular exchange with our stakeholders serves to strengthen trust in our company and at the same time, to increase the chances of our activities succeeding. We can achieve many of our sustainability targets only in cooperation with partners from politics, science, society and industry, therefore we engage ourselves in several different industry initiatives. After all, the impact of our actions is greater if many stakeholders tackle social challenges jointly and systematically.
We employ various dialogue activities and formats, including, for example, our multifaceted work with associations and with The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), an international industry body with Steffen Greubel, Chairman of the Management Board of METRO AG as part of the CGF board and co-chair of the product data coalition.
Additionally, we foster dialogue with our stakeholder groups through our membership in various initiatives. Among other things, METRO has committed itself to complying with their guidelines. These initiatives include:
- amfori Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI)
- Cerrado Manifesto Statement of Support Group
- Consumer Goods Forum – Forest Positive Coalition
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
- Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI)
- Global Tuna Alliance (GTA)
- Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST)
- International Labour Organization (ILO)
- Palm Oil Transparency Coalition (POTC)
- Retailer Cocoa Coalition
- Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
- Roundtable for Responsible Soy (RTRS)
- Science Based Target Initiative
- UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- World Resouce Institute (WRI) Champion 12.3 - 10x20x30 initiative
In addition we cultivate dialogue on sustainability-related issues by discussing and answering enquiries from NGOs, rating agencies and investors.
METRO is also at the core of political developments in areas such as trade, food, sustainability, entrepreneurship and digitisation. Seeking exchange with politics and other stakeholders from society.
In Berlin, METRO AG enables dialogue between stakeholders from politics, restaurateurs and retailers in own specified event formats, where members of parliament can meet among others restaurateurs and discuss about the challenges of gastronomy or the "Polit-Talk" as part of the Own Business Day to enable exchange from representatives with local stakeholders from wholesale and hospitality. METRO also supports cross-party events (e.g. the summer reception of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia or the celebrations around the German Unity Day) in order to enable a broad dialogue between business, politics and civil society.
As a genuine European company, METRO AG also wants to participate actively in the political and social debate at EU level. In September 2013, it hosted its first Wednesday Social in Brussels. Since March 2017 METRO cooperates with the European Movement International to organize and host innovative formats to enable a dialog between civil society, political institutions and the business community.
