Europees Economisch en Sociaal Comité
The coming years will see new prospects and challenges for European products and services, according to the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). Providing innovative, highly specialised products and services with well-recognised and certified key characteristics can boost European competitiveness, says the EESC.
A delegation of members of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) visited three Finnish technological hubs to assess the potential benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence for our society. They stressed that all future developments must encompass three pillars: product safety, consumer trust, and solidarity in health and social care.
The European Economic and Social Committee, in collaboration with the French Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Social Economy and the city and Eurometropole area of Strasbourg, is organising the 4th European Day of Social Economy Enterprises on the theme of Social economy: Involving regions and civil society. Pact for Impact for the European Union.
To mark the European Week of Waste Reduction, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) gave the initiative its full support and called for a cultural shift to reduce waste production in the EU. The EESC has undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce its own waste production and has addressed this topic in several opinions, as well as being a key partner in the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform.
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is adopting a firm stance on artificial intelligence and has insisted, at a high-level conference held in Helsinki on 21 November 2019, that the digital revolution must have a human face, be inclusive and bring benefits for all Europeans.
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) suggests that the EU should develop a certification for trustworthy AI applications, to be delivered by an independent body after testing the products for key requirements such as resilience, safety, and absence of prejudice, discrimination or bias. The proposal has been put forward in two recent EESC opinions assessing the European Commission's ethical guidelines on AI.
Blockchain technology has the potential to transform society, but there is a need for legal clarity and certainty and therefore a common EU approach. This is the key message of an own-initiative opinion adopted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on 30 October, which also calls on the European Commission to launch a comprehensive initiative to make the EU a global authority in this field.
Originally associated with cryptocurrencies, blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are in fact very versatile and can be usefully applied to the social economy. However, it is important to regulate them properly and gear them to benefits for all, allowing everyone to participate, says the EESC in a report tabled at its July plenary.
So far, actions to boost the development of a circular economy in Europe have centred on production, getting industries to introduce circular business models and bring circular options to the market.
The single market has been a great achievement. The EU needs to make sure citizens are aware that many of the very real benefits they have enjoyed in the past 25 years as consumers, business owners or workers are the result of the single market. This will help rally the support needed to make it fit for the digital era, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) argues in its response to the European Commission's assessment of the state of play of the single market.
