The Empirical Research of Environmental Protection Significance in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

Protection and promotion of quality of the environment concerns everyone, from the individual to the global level. This process must include all the countries in the world and all the entities within those countries. With a view to having businesses contributing to environmental protection, in recent years, there have been discussions on ecological management within companies. Numerous standards and management systems defined at local, regional, and international levels are adding to the growing impact of ecological management. The environment is one of the key issues within the European Union where the EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) system and the group of standards ISO 14000 relating to the environment and companies’ relationship to it were defined. Unlike the EMAS system, which is binding to members of the EU, ISO standards are not, but most businesses in the EU implement them in their operations. Companies in RS, resulting from cooperation with EU companies, frequently choose to implement these standards, likewise, to facilitate cooperation with foreign businesses which frequently demand the implementation of these standards. To ascertain how much importance domestic companies place on environmental management and protection this research contains a survey through which the respondents indicate that they do not have much faith in the attitudes of domestic businesses towards the environment. For this reason, it is necessary to make advancements in this area in the future.