"Use-value" is back: new prospects and challenges for European products and services (own-initiative opinion)

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.

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