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. The Committee works under tight deadlines, in anticipation of the referral, to finalise the opinion before the March Council discussion on the topic. To reinforce the Committee's impact throughout the entire European Semester, an own-initiative opinion with additional considerations is regularly produced by October taking into account the overall European Semester, which plays a central role in implementing the Recovery and Resilience Facility and is vital in current discussions about the review of the EU macro-economic governance framework.
Download format:
Download — Dictamen del CESE: Additional considerations on the Annual Sustainable Growth Survey 2023
With this debate, the ECO section is providing ex-ante input to the European Commission, in preparation for the upcoming 2023 strategic foresight cycle that wants to shed light on the strategic decisions needed to ensure a socially and economically sustainable Europe with a stronger role in the world in the coming decades.
How the EU can push back against resource depletion
Event type
Conference
Location
Rue Belliard 99, 1040
Brussels
Belgium
This public event will assess the extent of the EU's current ecological overshoot and look into proposals from organised civil society to push back against resource depletion and present some best practices and initiatives to reduce the EU's ecological footprint.
The main objective of this initiative is to encourage consumers to use consumer goods for a longer time, by repairing defective goods and by purchasing more second-hand and refurbished goods. It will entail the adoption of a proposal for an amendment of the Sale of Goods Directive and possibly a separate new legislative proposal on the right to repair.
This year – 2022 – the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) will be co-organising the first-ever EU organic awards, together with the European Commission, European Committee of the Regions (CoR), COPA-COGECA and IFOAM Organics Europe, aimed at recognising excellence and rewarding the best and most innovative players in the EU organic value chain.
The aim of this OIO is to identify avenues for a transparent and credible sustainability-labelling framework, which is easy to understand and empowers consumers to make more sustainable food choices. The OIO would contribute to achieving more sustainable and healthy food systems in practice by exploring potential avenues to empower the consumer to make more sustainable buying decisions.
Download format:
Download — Dictamen del CESE: Towards a sustainable food labelling framework to empower consumers to make sustainable food choices
The European Commission has published a proposal for a new regulatory framework for batteries and waste batteries, aiming to establish minimum sustainability requirements for all batteries placed on the EU internal market. The EESC supports the proposed measures, however, it calls for more precise and workable governance instruments to implement the new regulation, with the involvement of all stakeholders.
