EESC: The EU bioeconomy requires robust safeguards and clear direction

The EU needs a strong and coherent bioeconomy strategy grounded in strict sustainability safeguards, circular design, and reduced resource use, ensuring competitiveness and climate goals remain within planetary boundaries. It must also clearly define the societal value of the bioeconomy.

In its opinion, 'EU Bioeconomy Strategy: Towards a Circular, Regenerative and Competitive Bioeconomy', adopted on 29 April, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) emphasised that Europe is a resource-constrained and highly import-dependent continent. It relies on fossil fuels and raw materials in an increasingly tense geopolitical situation. At the same time, overexploitation of natural resources is one of the main causes of ongoing biodiversity loss. Therefore the EU bioeconomy strategy must be firmly anchored in the European Green Deal and the Sustainable Development Goals, integrating climate, biodiversity, and circular economy objectives. The strategy should function as a framework that enables decarbonisation and supports long-term competitiveness within global environmental limits.

'If we want a resilient society, aligning with natural cycles is crucial, so let’s not forget that the EU’s bioeconomy must be a model of global responsibility, not just regional competitiveness', stressed Arnaud Schwartz, the rapporteur.

EU leadership in the bioeconomy, as EESC highlights in its opinion, hinges on establishing clear and enforceable sustainability safeguards that define which biological resources can be used as inputs. These rules must apply to all supply chains, whether biomass is produced in the EU or imported, and they must be measurable, enforceable and consistently monitored. The EESC also calls for greater clarity on the societal value of the use and non-use of bioeconomy resources. It underlines that the framework should support the creation of quality jobs, particularly in rural and remote regions, while ensuring a level playing field. This would involve addressing unfair global competition from underpriced, fossil-based materials that fail to reflect their environmental costs, including extraction, use and depletion.

The EESC urges a stronger commitment to the waste hierarchy, prioritising the reduction of overall resource consumption as the basis for true circularity. While the “A Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy”, tabled by the European Commission in 2025, does mention a hierarchy of use of biomass that fosters resource efficiency, the safeguards are too vague, leaving too much room for use as energy or other short-term single-cycle applications that do not close the loop. Instead, the EESC calls for a shift towards long-term, multi-cycle solutions that maximise resource efficiency and strengthen the circular nature of the bioeconomy.

As the EESC stated in its opinion, stakeholder involvement is central to the development of the EU bioeconomy. New governance platforms, such as the Bioeconomy Regulators and Innovators Forum, should ensure transparent and inclusive processes in which all stakeholders, including civil society, can effectively contribute. The EESC also draws attention to the value of established networks such as the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP), the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), the European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN), and the Horizon Europe consortia, which play a key role in strengthening coordination, learning, and knowledge sharing. The EESC supports the creation of a permanent youth participatory platform, building on the EU Bioeconomy Youth Ambassadors initiative, to ensure the meaningful involvement of young people in the European Union’s bioeconomy decision-making. (ks)