STEP platform

Key points

The EESC:

• recommends that investment in human capital should go hand in hand with investment in the research and development of manufacturing technologies. In particular, the EESC calls for new policies to upskill and retrain workers uniformly across the 27 Member States, in order to prevent brain drains and competitive imbalances.
• recommends that the co-legislators promote, during the legislative process, the definition of a uniform interpretation of the sectors covered by the regulation, as it does not feature in the Commission proposal.
• calls on the Commission to assess, on the basis of previous experience, the possibility of establishing a fully-fledged sovereignty fund when the time comes to negotiate the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework (MFF). This should be accompanied by a set of long-term, future-oriented reforms to support industry, in the context of broader efforts to ensure the fiscal stability of and parity between the Member States.