Green Deal Industrial Plan

Key points

The EESC:

• asks for an audit to be carried out to identify how the EU can control and improve its value chains and avoid excessive dependencies: it will not be possible for either the Green Deal, the Digital Decade, or the industrial, space or automotive sectors to be successful in the future without a strong industrial base. Nor will it be possible without secure and sustainable sources of critical raw materials.
• underlines that the Commission should also work a competitiveness check into EU decision-making. This would help make EU businesses more competitive, ensuring a balance between the economic, social and environmental dimensions in the making of legislative proposals.
• stresses that the GDIP and the NZIA should not focus narrowly on promoting green technologies and picking "winners", but rather encourage the development of a diverse industrial sector as the basis for Europe's industrial policy. They should also include measures to ensure that Member States' public funding for projects, including State aid and subsidies, do not distort the single market or threaten economic convergence and social cohesion across the EU.
• points out that fast-track permitting should not be limited to net-zero technology as envisaged in the proposals, but should be made the standard procedure for all economic sectors.

For more information, please contact the INT Section Secretariat