Comitetul Economic si Social European
This is an exploratory opinion requested by the Swedish presidency of the Council as a follow-up to the opinion INT/1000 Competitiveness check adopted at the request of the Czech presidency.
The aim of the opinion is to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of both conventional and organic farming in order to identify the policy levers that are most effective and most likely to attain food sufficiency in EU Member States, while ensuring the transition to more sustainable food systems.
Currently, there are elements in the current framework cause an uneven processing of API data across the EU, thus resulting in security gaps and uncertainty for both data subjects, air-carriers and national authorities. Therefore the proposal aims to address such gaps to ensure effective processing of API data with clear rules and transparency, and in full consistency with the interoperability of EU information systems for borders, security and migration management, EU data protection requirements, and other existing EU instruments and international standards, while ensuring facilitation of legitimate travellers.
This initiative will require companies to substantiate claims they make about the environmental footprint of their products/services by using standard methods for quantifying them. The aim is to make the claims reliable, comparable and verifiable across the EU – reducing ‘greenwashing’.
Efficient insolvency laws are one of the key criteria for investors to decide on whether to invest across borders. Increasing confidence in cross-border financing will boost the Union’s capital markets.