In response to the successful European Citizens' Initiative, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has adopted an own-initiative opinion calling on the European Commission to introduce a legally binding EU-wide ban on conversion practices by including such practices as 'EU crimes' and recognising them as hate crimes. The EESC strongly condemns any practices aimed at changing, suppressing or erasing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression, considering them incompatible with human dignity and in breach of the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. The EESC calls for a comprehensive and precisely defined ban covering both children and adults, all public and private actors, and the advertisement of such practices. It recommends that the prohibition explicitly includes sex characteristics, in order to protect intersex individuals from non-consensual and non-therapeutic interventions.
In this own-initiative opinion, the EESC argues that deeper integration of the Single Market is essential to boost productivity, particularly in the services sector, which remains less integrated despite its growing economic importance.
The opinion examines the digital omnibus, a set of two legislative proposals which focuses on bringing regulatory simplification and immediate relief to businesses active on digital.
The EESC welcomes the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report: Resilience 2.0, while underlining that future reports should also address radical disruptions. The EESC is uniquely placed to detect weak signals and underlying trends in strategic foresight and therefore its foresight-driven viewpoint should continuously feed into the Commission’s policy cycle. The EESC also calls for common, verifiable EU-wide metrics for socio-economic and institutional resilience. In this regard, the EESC is of the view that strategic foresight should also support sustainable and inclusive well-being as part of the European social model.
This opinion explores the potential of the bioeconomy and how policies can ensure its long-term competitiveness and investment security, while safeguarding nature. It will present civil society's views on further goals which include increasing resource-efficient and circular use of biological resources, securing a sustainable supply of biomass, both within the EU and from international sources, and strengthening the EU’s position in the rapidly expanding global bioeconomy.
The exploratory opinion examines territorial supply constraints as an ongoing obstacle to the effective functioning of the EU Single Market. Taking into account the EESC’s work on Single Market integration and enforcement, the opinion responds to renewed political efforts to remove market fragmentation, with a focus on strengthening enforcement against barriers to cross-border trade.
This initiative aims to simplify EU legislation on medical devices and diagnostics to enhance competitiveness, foster innovation and ensure proportionate, cost-effective safety requirements while maintaining high levels of patient protection and public health.
This initiative seeks to revise EU CO₂ emission standards for new cars and vans to support a fact-based, economically viable and socially fair transition toward zero-emission mobility.
The Commission presents a proposal to enhance the control of drug precursors, the chemical substances that are used by both legitimate industries and in the production of illicit drugs. As Europe’s drug market evolves, the proposal strengthens authorities to respond to emerging drugs and production processes.
