Comité Económico e Social Europeu
On Friday, 14 April 2023, the NAT Section is organising a public hearing "Towards a European Food Policy Council / Sustainable Food System" to feed into the own-initiative opinion NAT/892- Towards a European Food Policy Council as a new governance model in the future EU Framework on Sustainable Food Systems in order to compile the views of the civil society organisations working on these issues.
Following the success of the previous Youth Climate and Sustainability Round Tables, the EESC, in cooperation with the European Youth Forum and Generation Climate Europe, will host the third EU Youth Round Table on Wednesday 30 November, between 14:30 and 16:00 CET.
In the context of the 60 years anniversary of the Common Agricultural Policy but also of the terrible war in Ukraine, the NAT section of the EESC will hold a thematic debate with its members, EU institutions and stakeholders to discuss the economic, social and environmental transition needed to ensure European agriculture continues to achieve its objectives in a sustainable and resilient manner.
The event will take place both in Brussels and in Ljubljana in hybrid form. Registration for external participants will be open on this page until 25 November 2021.
To deliver on the European Green Deal, the European Commission will have to rethink policies in a variety of fields, not least in the agri-food sector. The initiatives linked to agri-food promotion, the renewal of the CAP and the "Farm to the fork" strategy will transform our current reality to achieve a more socially sustainable, environmentally friendly and healthy food production. To make this socio-economic transition a success, it is essential to involve all stakeholders in the reorganization of the European food markets.
The EESC Employers' Group believes that we should provide entrepreneurs with the adequate conditions so that they can thrive and create innovative and decent jobs in a recovering economy. The EESC Employers' Group can play a critical role in creating an enabling and encouraging business environment also for the agri-food sector that meets the challenges and seizes the opportunities of sustainable development.
This online public hearing will discuss how to transform the targets proposed in the Action Plan for the development of EU organic production into on-the-ground strategies related to organic production and consumption.
High-level conference on "The Multiannual Financial Framework post 2020: Challenges and opportunities" with the participation of representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council presidency.
The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) has been the main framework for relations between the continents of Europe and Africa since 2007. Its goal is to develop a shared vision of the main global issues whilst simultaneously strengthening cooperation in a broad range of areas such as development, governance, human rights, trade, regional integration, food security and migration. To this end, meetings of EU-African economic and social stakeholders are held on a regular basis.
On 9 November 2016 the EESC and CoR organised a conference on balanced territorial development entitled "Cork+20: leaving rural areas behind is no longer an option". At stake was the European Commission's new rural development strategy, which would normally have to be inspired by the new Cork 2.0 Declaration that has been co-signed by stakeholders at the Cork conference on 5-6 September 2016.
Now is the time to put the Cork 2.0 Declaration into action.
The EESC opinion is the organized civil society's contribution to the follow-up of the Conference. At the public hearing on 3 May we discussed concrete actions for implementing the measures of the declaration. The trend towards a systematic prioritarization of urban areas across the whole set of EU sectoral policies must be reversed!
The EESC hearing on 14 February 2017 was an opportunity for all people who were interested in rural issues to meet, present work in progress and exchange ideas and knowledge – and get inspired by examples of successful projects and initiatives in other rural communities. Together we thought of better ways to empower the rural communities to play their full part in addressing vital policy areas such as food security, renewable energy, environmental protection and job creation.
