Key points
The EESC:
- considers that providing innovative, highly-specialised products and services with well-recognised and certified key characteristics that cater to customers' needs, as well as to social and environmental sustainability requirements, can become the essence and focus of modern European competitiveness;
- highlights that European small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can become an important factor in redefining Europe's position in the contemporary distribution of labour, responding to the demand for variety worldwide;
- recommends policy interventions in the following directions: (i) national and EU governance should apply a use-value oriented policy mix, spatially adjusted according to local characteristics and needs; (ii) developing a similarly ambitious industrial policy for Europe and promoting clustering and cooperatism of (semi-) autonomous producers, whereby preserving variety matches scale benefits in specific segments of the product life cycle; (iii) generalising industrial symbiosis in order to promote the circular economy; (iv) improving access to financial resources by implementing the capital markets union action plan and its promotion of microfinancing tools, as well as through green and use-value-related banking approaches.
For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat.