Our commitment

CSR report CSR report
Galapagos NV • Annual Report 2018

Our commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is to find new ways to improve healthcare and quality of life for patients and their families with our novel mode of action investigational medicines. Our core business is discovery of breakthrough therapies for diseases with large unmet medical needs in primarily inflammation and fibrosis. On a daily basis, we aim to make a lasting contribution to society with our discovery and clinical development efforts. Filgotinib, GLPG1690, and MOR106 are the first clinical examples of how our approach to finding novel medicines may be able to make a difference for patients in many disease areas. We have a substantial pipeline of novel candidate medicines in inflammation and fibrosis. This approach addresses the disease itself rather than just treating the symptoms. In this way, we aim to make a lasting positive contribution to society through discovery of breakthrough therapies. We aim to bring impactful medicines to patients ourselves.

Implementing our CSR initiatives

In our business operations we strive to comply with all relevant laws, standards, and guidelines, prioritize the well-being of our employees, and minimize our impact on the environment. We have high ethical standards and aim to conduct business with companies that share our ethics and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights. We aim to support and respect the protection of human rights through policies that address responsible supplier management, ethical procedures, and health and safety procedures.

Starting in 2019, the audit committee of the board of directors will regularly review CSR initiatives, ensuring that we implement our planned initiatives and communicate them effectively and accurately to our employees and shareholders. Our CSR report discloses the main highlights of our CSR initiatives but does not reflect all of our ongoing initiatives and procedures. As part of our commitment to CSR, we monitor new developments and practices and will consider implementing new initiatives that could further enhance our CSR activities in the future.

Our CSR report focuses on:

  • Improving people’s lives
  • Diversity and human capital management
  • Business ethics
  • Environment, health, and safety

This CSR report provides the non-financial information required by article 96, §4 and article 119, §2 of the Belgian Companies Code. We have further considered reporting frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Standards (SRS) and the ‘European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies Guideline for the Integration of ESG into Financial Analysis and Corporate Valuation’ and used different elements as an inspiration to build this report.

For a discussion of risks, please see the section called “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report.

The KPIs for our new drug development, handled in the section Improving People’s Lives, are the most material non-financial KPIs in our report.