09/09/18

ICC: leading in different compliance areas worldwide for decades

Business ethics and compliance management have been part of the DNA of the activities of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) since its inception nearly a century ago. ICC’s founders acted on their conviction that the private sector is best qualified to set global standards for business, calling themselves “The merchants of peace.”

For instance, fair and equitable treatment in international business dispute resolution was handled since 1923 with the creation of the ICC International Court of Arbitration®, which remains today the largest and preferred institution in the field. Standardizing the practice of documentary credits worldwide was achieved by ICC since 1933 with the UCP rules – still the authoritative standard for trade finance banks and companies. And in 1936 were created the Incoterms® rules, the absolute companion for cross-border trade of goods.

More recently, the ICC Anti-corruption Rules were the first of their kind in the world in 1977, to be issued by a business organization. Since then, ICC remains at the forefront of the development of ethics, anti-corruption and corporate responsibility advocacy codes and guidelines, with a focus on private sector anti-corruption training and self-regulation. This includes the recent ICC Business Integrity Compendium (free download).

ICC serves member companies in many different areas of compliance as well. Like in competition law, trade compliance, data protection or ethical marketing and advertising. It is thus no surprise that ICC Belgium partnered with the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB), the Federation of Belgian Chambers of Commerce (Belgian Chambers) and Transparency International Belgium to launch the compliancepro.be’s Register of compliance professionals and the compact training cycle (5 afternoons between October 2018 and February 2019).

Also not a surprise, then, that ICC is the prominent global and multi-sectoral  business voice for the discussions about the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the only business organization granted a status of Observer at the United Nations General Assembly. Today’s global Chair of the ICC is Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever; while the President of ICC Belgium is Vincent Reuter, former chair of the Board of Credendo, the official Belgian export credit agency.

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