This opinion explores the potential of the bioeconomy and how policies can ensure its long-term competitiveness and investment security, while safeguarding nature. It will present civil society's views on further goals which include increasing resource-efficient and circular use of biological resources, securing a sustainable supply of biomass, both within the EU and from international sources, and strengthening the EU’s position in the rapidly expanding global bioeconomy.
Growing resource use is driving the triple planetary crisis, pushing the EU beyond planetary boundaries and leaving many Member States off track for the 2030 circular material use target. Demand-side measures and ambitious primary material reduction policies are essential to reverse this trend and strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy.
This exploratory opinion will feed into the work of the European Commission during the preparations of the Circular Economy Act.
The Cyprus Presidency has asked the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) to draw up an exploratory opinion aimed at analysing how affordable housing initiatives can integrate measures to reduce energy costs for families and support vulnerable households.
Current legislation requires N2 vehicles to be equipped with speed‑limitation devices, a rule originally designed for heavy‑duty vehicles to ensure road safety and environmental protection. Electric vans, however, often fall into the N2 category solely due to their battery weight. The exemption aims to align electric vans with their fossil‑fuel equivalents and support the transition to cleaner transport.
The opinion deals with the 28th Regime legislative initiative whose purpose is to provide companies, especially innovative ones, with a single set of rules to invest more easily and operate in the Single Market.
The EESC welcomes the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report: Resilience 2.0, while underlining that future reports should also address radical disruptions. The EESC is uniquely placed to detect weak signals and underlying trends in strategic foresight and therefore its foresight-driven viewpoint should continuously feed into the Commission’s policy cycle. The EESC also calls for common, verifiable EU-wide metrics for socio-economic and institutional resilience. In this regard, the EESC is of the view that strategic foresight should also support sustainable and inclusive well-being as part of the European social model.
Download — Γνωμοδότηση τμήμστος της ΕΟΚΕ: Strategic Foresight Report 2025
Following up on the own-initiative opinion on “Blue Diplomacy and Water cooperation: solutions to relieve the pressure of climate induced migration” the REX section received from the Commission a request to elaborate an exploratory opinion on "Water diplomacy in action: restoring the global hydrological cycle".
This opinion addressed the Commission's legislative initiative which aims to reduce the administrative burden without affecting the environmental objectives agreed under the existing legislation in the areas of, among others, industrial installations and circular economy, environmental assessments and permitting, chemical waste, Extended Producer Responsibility and waste management.
The exploratory opinion examines territorial supply constraints as an ongoing obstacle to the effective functioning of the EU Single Market. Taking into account the EESC’s work on Single Market integration and enforcement, the opinion responds to renewed political efforts to remove market fragmentation, with a focus on strengthening enforcement against barriers to cross-border trade.
In response to the successful European Citizens' Initiative, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has adopted an own-initiative opinion calling on the European Commission to introduce a legally binding EU-wide ban on conversion practices by including such practices as 'EU crimes' and recognising them as hate crimes. The EESC strongly condemns any practices aimed at changing, suppressing or erasing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression, considering them incompatible with human dignity and in breach of the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The EESC calls for a comprehensive and precisely defined ban covering both children and adults, all public and private actors, and the advertisement of such practices. It recommends that the prohibition explicitly includes sex characteristics, in order to protect intersex individuals from non-consensual and non-therapeutic interventions.
