23 April 2021
On Thursday, 22 April 2021, SGI Europe General Secretary Ms Valeria Ronzitti met with Slovenian Minister of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Mr Janez Cigler Kralj to discuss the priorities of the upcoming Slovenian presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Three main priorities have been put forward: the effective implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, the push for an inclusive digitalisation, as well as progress to advance the EU Green Deal and a fair transition.
Moreover, the Slovenian Precedency will also focus on important social affairs such as building responsive and resilient employment market, developing measures for better work-life balance, gender equality, and tackling demographic challenges and active ageing.
SGI Europe intends to positively contribute to the upcoming Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU and during the second half of 2021.
Contact: Guillaume Afellat
On Wednesday 21 April, the European Commission adopted its first delegated act on Mitigation and Adaptation of the EU Taxonomy. You can find the delegated act here, as well as the accompanying annexes here and here. The Commission has also published an accompanying Communication, providing an overview of the Sustainable Finance Package and clarifying outstanding questions around the EU Taxonomy and how to use and understand the adopted acts. Following up on the proposal, SGI Europe reacted and commented via press release.
This week, the Platform on Sustainable Finance, of which SGI Europe is a member, gathered to further reflect on the future of the EU taxonomy, including the ongoing reflection on shaping a Social Taxonomy, and on how to ensure a strong relation between the two taxonomies to maximize the impact of the overall EU strategy for sustainable finance.
With a direct seat in the Platform, SGI Europe sees it as essential that this policy framework continues to follow the key objective of improving the data availability regarding the social sustainability performance, including for social infrastructure and services providers, to become more attractive for investments.
Contact: Henriette Gleau and Stefan Enica
On Wednesday 21 April, SGI Europe took part in a panel during the Public Employment Services Network annual conference, together with BusinessEurope, the ETUC and SMEunited.
With welcoming introductions from Nicolas Schmit, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights and Johannes Kopf, Chair of the PES Network, the event brought together representatives of Public Employment Services (PES) with other labour market actors, including the European social partners, to discuss the latest trends and practices in the effective use of partnership working by PES.
The social partners dedicated panel focused on the issue of Practical Partnership responses to COVID. PES are facing an increasing challenge in assisting job seekers and employers in dealing with the changes related to demographic ageing, digitalization and the COVID-19 crisis, especially the impact on citizens farthest from the labour market. Enhancing partnership is a valuable tool for generating capacity and identifying specialist expertise to meet the needs of harder to integrate customers. Advances in technology offer considerable opportunities for an increasingly dynamic and fluid relationship between a range of providers, including PES and social partners. The cross-industry social partners will further work with the PES network and SGI Europe has been invited to attend the managing board of the PES network taking place in June to further exchange on the critical importance of fostering partnerships.
Contact: Guillaume Afellat
On 21 April, the European Parliament and the European Council have reached an agreement on the first ever EU Climate Law. The new law aims to increase the EU’s 2030 emission reduction target from originally 40% up to at least 55% whilst boosting the contribution from removals that can bring the target up to 57%. With this agreement, the EU Member States agree to a binding obligation to reach climate neutrality by 2050 sending a clear signal to citizens and businesses to reassure legal certainty and predictability for sustainable investment plans.
Whilst the EU Climate law aims to avoid further Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the law also recognises that the already emitted GHG will need to be removed to compensate for GHG emissions from sectors where decarbonisation is most difficult.
SGI Europe welcomes this milestone decision which brings more legal certainty to the ambitions of the EU Green Deal. The roadmap to climate neutrality will however remain challenging. Following the adoption of this EU Climate Law, all climate and energy EU legislations (such as the revision of the Clean Energy Package, including the Renewable Energy Directive, Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive) must now be put in line with this ambition. Legal certainty across legislative files is needed to ensure successful results on a social, economic, and environmental level in implementing the EU Green Deal.
We therefore positively assess that an independent scientific body will be set up to assess whether the policies are consistent and to monitor progress. The Advisory Board will consist of 15 scientific experts appointed for four years. Additionally, the Commission will also facilitate sector-specific climate dialogues and partnerships by bringing together key stakeholders to encourage sectors to draw up roadmaps towards climate neutrality.
The deal will now be sent for a final approval to the European Parliament and to the European Council. The Regulation will then enter into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal.
Contact: Henriette Gleau
On 19 April 2021, Ana Paula Zacarias, Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs on behalf of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, Guy Verhofstadt (Renew, BE), from the European Parliament, and Dubravka Šuica, European Commission’s Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, co-chairs of the Executive Board of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), officially launched the digital multilingual platform which will function as a central hub for the CoFoE: futureu.europa.eu/
The three co-chairs presented the new platform highlighting that its scope is to create a participatory tool supporting the Conference’s bottom-up approach by gathering contributions, including from decentralised events, European Citizens' Panels and Conference Plenaries, that will feed in the overall debate on future reforms of the EU and ultimately provide inputs at the top level of the three EU institutions. Furthermore, the co-chairs stressed that the new platform stands as a timely and ambitious attempt to build a sound and functioning European democratic space via the adoption of new technologies.
SGI Europe believes that the Conference should provide the right framework for a wide exchange of the lessons learned from previous and current crises, as well as an opportunity to debate in a bottom-up, participatory manner what citizens expect from the EU and how the Union must prepare and be equipped to tackle crises more effectively. In addition, SGI Europe commits to bringing the strategic role of services of general interest on the CoFoE political agenda, as a central element the EU’s recovery and strategic autonomy.
The official launch of the CoFoE is scheduled on 9 May, during the Europe Day, with the organisation of its first plenary session.
Contact: Antonio Astolfi
On Monday, 19 April 2021, the Commission adopted the revised EU Guidelines on Regional State aid (the “The Regional Aid Guidelines”). Whilst regions where GDP per capita amounted to 75% of the EU’s average were eligible for the regional state aid, the EU Commission is proposing with the revised Guidelines to broaden its scope to regions facing transition challenges and are involved in coal mining, gas extraction and heavy industry.
This reflects the new policy priorities related to the European Green Deal and the European Industrial and Digital Strategies and aims at creating additional incentives for investments. Furthermore, the revised Guidelines give “special aid intensity bonuses” for regions that are outermost regions, Just Transition Areas in the most disadvantaged areas, border areas, isolated regions, or experiencing population loss. Before the Regional Aid Guidelines enter into force on 1 January 2022, the Member States must submit to the Commission maps of the regions to which they intend to disburse aid.
The adoption of the revised Regional Aid Guidelines was only the first legal text to be revised in the context of the findings of the Fitness Check of the 2012 State aid modernisation package, railways guidelines, and short-term export credit insurance, whose purpose was to check whether the rules are still fit for purpose.
Another legal text currently being reviewed in this context is the Framework for State aid for research and development and innovation (“RDI Framework”). The Commission launched the consultation on 8 April 2021 and is open for feedback until 3 June 2021. The new Draft RDI Framework, which is subject to public consultation, aims at clarifying definitions such as innovation clusters, industrial research, experimental development, as well as process and organisational innovation activities and for RDI rules applicable to innovation aid for SME. Furthermore, the draft RDI Framework aims at introducing compatibility criteria to allow support for technology infrastructures to reflect market and technology evolution, and at alleviating the administrative burden.
In addition to the already mentioned RDI Framework, the Commission aims to also revise the IPCEI Communication, Risk Finance Guidelines, Environmental and Energy Guidelines, and relevant provisions of GBER before the end of 2021.
Contact: Manca Pocivavsek
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