La norme ISO 26000 relative à la responsabilité sociétale : une nouvelle source d'usages internationaux

Résumé 0

ISO 26000 NORM ON SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY : A NEW SOURCE OF CUSTOMARY LAW Sustainable development concerns have conducted to build an international system of reference recognised by most of the economic actors. With the objective of taking into account the interests of all stakeholders, and also the needs of the present and future generations, the “social responsibility guidelines” have been created. What could possibly be the “legal status” or the place in the legal hierarchy, of the norm ISO 26000 among the 17000 standards issued by the ISO since its creation in 1946 ? Private by its origin, this socio-political standard, can’t leave the scholar indifferent in a context of a globalized world where converging initiatives by private and public actors, aiming at regulating the economic activities, have lead to the emergence of a new form of intervention of the States and the International Institutions in the market. With this new and innovative standardisation process set forth by ISO 26000, which is based on a large consensus, we seem to be witnessing the emergence, or the formalisation, of an international custom. In addition, the universal impact of this “metanorm” raises the question of its potential legal effects and its interface with the “lex mercatoria”, or more generally, to international economic law.