The European Union has close to 182 million hectares of forests covering 43% of its land area and these forest areas are one of Europe's most important renewable resources. EU forests are exceptionally diverse, with a large variety of forest types, characteristics and ownership structures. They provide multiple benefits for society and the economy whilst being a major source of biodiversity.
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Reporting requirements are key for the enforcement and monitoring of legislation, but can also lead to burdens on stakeholders. The European Commission, under the REFIT programme, is proposing to streamline reporting obligations and reducing administrative burdens with regards to financial services, the InvestEU programme and certain benchmarks, while allowing the reuse of data for innovation and research purposes.
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The EESC calls for a strategy for civil dialogue, resulting in an action plan, and potentially an interinstitutional agreement for improved civil dialogue. It advocates for making Article 11 TEU effective by strengthening actors in the different EU institutions dealing with civil dialogue and create an annual civil dialogue scoreboard tracing the EU's engagement with civil society, and an accreditation mechanism for CSOs. It reiterates that the EESC should be at the centre of civil society consultation and civil dialogue and calls for a stronger role for the Committee in participatory democracy, including being a potential hub for citizen panels.
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In this opinion, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) highlights the challenges hindering efficient cross-border access to social security services, including bureaucratic complexity and uneven progress in digitalisation across Member States. While supportive of the European Commission's efforts to simplify processes and enhance digitalisation, the EESC emphasises the need for accelerated progress and urges developing comprehensive action plans considering diverse stakeholder needs. Recognising the overall need for digitalisation, the EESC stresses the importance of inclusive solutions for digitally excluded individuals as well as robust IT systems to ensure data protection and cybersecurity. Additionally, the EESC calls for the finalisation of the revision of Regulation 883/2004 to address obstacles to free movement more effectively.
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Every year in February, the EESC adopts an opinion on Annual Sustainable Growth Survey, which the Commission usually presents at the end of November in the year before. This communication outlines the economic and employment policy priorities for the EU for the following 12 months, with a view to mitigating the negative impacts of the energy shocks in the short term and to foster sustainable growth and increase the EU’s resilience in the medium term. The structured approach, like in previous years, centres around the four dimensions of competitive sustainability and in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The ASGS also continues to guide Member States in the implementation of the national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs). The EESC's opinion on the ASGS 2024 is due to be adopted at the plenary session of 24-25 February 2024.
The Belgian presidency asked the EESC to provide an opinion on how to tackle poverty through social innovation and the development of the social economy. The fight against poverty and social exclusion must take into account the numerous dimensions of the concept of poverty that affect access to employment, education, healthcare, housing, food, mobility, digital tools, energy and culture, among other things. A cross-cutting approach to poverty is therefore essential in order to ensure social inclusion. Even though all economic actors are involved in the fight against poverty, it is up to the state to exercise its full responsibility in this area. The social economy contributes to this fight in an organic and cross-cutting way, through its diverse activities and social orientation.
Corruption and the lack of rule of law undermine the mutual trust that is underpinning the internal market. The EESC believes that efforts to fight corruption should be better aligned with efforts to safeguard and develop democracy in the EU. Moreover, the EESC stresses that the EU must prioritise evaluating the legislative framework on the integrity of public procurement and its implementation in practice and believes that the cross-debarment system could be useful for protecting the internal market from misuse of public resources allocated to tenders.
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EESC exploratory opinion NAT/913 - Towards the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2027: for an agricultural sector that meets economic, social and environmental needs
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The Commission is proposing new rules to create a legal form for European cross-border operations of non-profit associations, which will coexist with national non-profit associations. They will serve as a vehicle to facilitate the operations of associations with activities in more than one Member State. The new rules will eliminate legal and administrative obstacles, supporting the freedom of establishment, the free provision of services and goods, the freedom of capital and the mobility rights of non-profit associations. The proposal also encourages measures to ensure the interoperability of national registers with existing tools at EU level, such as the Single Digital Gateway, in order to allow automated access and exchange of data and/or use of agreed minimum standards to ensure comparability of data and the Internal Market Information System (IMI) to support administrative cooperation between competent authorities.
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The Belgian presidency of the Council of the European Union asked the EESC to provide their insights on the rethinking of the internal market in light of the acceleration of the Union’s twin transitions towards a green and digital economy and on crafting a European Industrial Strategy that positions industries as the backbone of Europe's economy.
Download — stanovisko EHSV: Developing a new European strategy for the Internal Market: helping our businesses to meet technological, social, environmental and competition challenges
