This paper presents an insight into the corporate social responsibility and its importance for the present and future. Corporate social responsibility is a concept of operations suited to modern trends . This method of operation involves ethics and care for the community and environment. The first part of the paper defined and explained the concept of sustainable development, and then presents the entire aspect of corporate social responsibility and analyzed its dimensions through which companies can implement the concept in their business. The second part includes a chronological overview of the development trends of corporate social responsibility within the European Union and the European institutions that operate for the purpose of its promotion, whose initiatives are a reflection to Croatia, since Croatia is a full member of European Union. The analysis of corporate social responsibility in Croatia gave more insight into the level of development at which it is located and the current trends. Selected companies enabled the display of corporate social responsibility in the case of practice, and on this basis, analyzes their performance in implementing the concept of internal and external level.