Post by pling on Dec 5, 2015 16:01:47 GMT
European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Raw Materials
- The European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials is a stakeholder platform that brings together representatives from industry, public services, academia and NGOs. Its mission is to provide high-level discussions and guidance to the European Commission, Members States, NGOs and private actors on innovative approaches to the challenges related to raw materials.
- The EIP on Raw Materials’ aim is to help raise industry’s contribution to the EU GDP to around 20% by 2020. It will also play an important role in meeting the objectives of the European Commission flagship initiatives ‘Innovation Union’ and ‘Resource Efficient Europe’. It will do this by ensuring the sustainable supply of raw materials to the European economy whilst increasing benefits for society as a whole, maintaining its standard of living and providing jobs.
- The EIP targets non-energy, non-agricultural raw materials. Many of these are vital inputs for innovative technologies and offer environmentally-friendly, clean-technology applications. They are also essential for the manufacture of new and innovative products required by our modern society, such as batteries for electric cars, photovoltaic systems and devices for wind turbines. With about 30 million EU jobs depending on the availability of raw materials the EIP will have a clear, positive impact on European industrial competitiveness.
- The EIP’s Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) sets out specific objectives and targets. Actions to achieve these include research and development, addressing policy framework conditions, disseminating best practices, gathering knowledge and fostering international cooperation.
Implementing the EIP on Raw Materials in selected EU Member States
- Late last year, to mark the start of the Juncker Commission’s term of office and the CCMI decided to hold four round tables in the course of 2015 - in Spain, Slovakia, Romania and Finland - on the Strategic Implementation Plan of the European
Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.
- The Raw Materials Initiative and the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials are key policies that may contribute decisively to maintaining the competitiveness and sustainability of European industry, and consequently, the safeguarding or creation of new jobs, especially in regions that were affected by restructuring due to globalization.
Topics addressed in the round-table discussions included
• Production, trade and consumption of energy and non-energy raw materials;
• Political, legal, administrative and societal challenges related with the secure access to raw materials from EU sources;
• Secondary raw materials and aspects related to the concept of “circular economy”;
• Health and Safety issues.
The objective of the round-table debates was to link the Member States’ economic and industrial policy along the value chain from raw materials to end-products and to develop strategies and overcome obstacles to maintain a well-functioning European industrial fabric by improving investment conditions and creating new jobs.
Main recommendations coming from the EESC Opinions on the Raw Materials Initiative
• The policy in raw materials domestic supply should take into account industry, environment policy and land-use planning as an integrated approach. The best practice in the field should be extended to new potential areas. Access to domestic resources within the Member States should be encouraged by providing the necessary balance between the environment and industrial development policies, as well as harmonised incentives for development and protection in extending existing sites and opening new ones where these are, on the one hand, economically and socially viable and desirable and, on the other, environmentally sustainable;
• The globalisation impact on the international supply of minerals should be properly assessed by the EU and Member States whenever the import of raw materials from outside prevails. European environmental and social standards should be observed when considering investment policy and industrial relocation. Access to raw material should be guaranteed for European Users and the strategic dependence of the EU should be reduced;
• Capacity building in European non-energy extractive industries bears upon a wide range of challenges, such as administrative barriers, the need to improve the sector’s image, the need for qualified manpower, management techniques, education and training;
• Improved efficiency of resource extraction processes depends on progress made in other sectors active in both mineral extraction and other areas and calls for cooperation between the European Commission and Member States;
• Better regulation through improved legal framework and permitting system; exchange of best practice in planning policies; cutting-down excessive administrative burden in the issuing of permits; facilitating exploration activities; promoting sustainable development in expanding extraction sites, and securing mineral deposits;
• Strengthening the compatibility of extraction and environmental protection by: extending best practice in and around Natura 2000; advocating the proximity principle in transport procedures in order to reduce pollution and costs, and improving access to resources;
• Reinforcing the mineral intelligence at the EU level by establishing a European geological capacity and a European Mineral Resources Information System, to be built on the basis of the capacities of the Member States’ National Geological Surveys;
• The EU should actively pursue raw materials diplomacy with a view to securing access to raw materials, and in so doing, contribute to creating funds and programmes focusing on capacity building that would support sustainable raw materials production and economic and social progress in developing countries;
• An inventory of best regulatory practices in the EU with regard to access to land for raw materials industries should be prepared with the view to simplifying procedures and reducing the sterilisation of mineral resources resulting from inadequate land use planning practices;
• The Commission should foster an objective methodology based on a full life cycle analysis to assess the validity of resource efficiency measures and of any ‘material substitution policy’;
• The Commission’s departments should strengthen recycling and facilitate the use of secondary raw materials in the EU and propose sound recycling, recovery and re-use strategies in non-EU countries by promoting best practices at international level.
- The European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials is a stakeholder platform that brings together representatives from industry, public services, academia and NGOs. Its mission is to provide high-level discussions and guidance to the European Commission, Members States, NGOs and private actors on innovative approaches to the challenges related to raw materials.
- The EIP on Raw Materials’ aim is to help raise industry’s contribution to the EU GDP to around 20% by 2020. It will also play an important role in meeting the objectives of the European Commission flagship initiatives ‘Innovation Union’ and ‘Resource Efficient Europe’. It will do this by ensuring the sustainable supply of raw materials to the European economy whilst increasing benefits for society as a whole, maintaining its standard of living and providing jobs.
- The EIP targets non-energy, non-agricultural raw materials. Many of these are vital inputs for innovative technologies and offer environmentally-friendly, clean-technology applications. They are also essential for the manufacture of new and innovative products required by our modern society, such as batteries for electric cars, photovoltaic systems and devices for wind turbines. With about 30 million EU jobs depending on the availability of raw materials the EIP will have a clear, positive impact on European industrial competitiveness.
- The EIP’s Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) sets out specific objectives and targets. Actions to achieve these include research and development, addressing policy framework conditions, disseminating best practices, gathering knowledge and fostering international cooperation.
Implementing the EIP on Raw Materials in selected EU Member States
- Late last year, to mark the start of the Juncker Commission’s term of office and the CCMI decided to hold four round tables in the course of 2015 - in Spain, Slovakia, Romania and Finland - on the Strategic Implementation Plan of the European
Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.
- The Raw Materials Initiative and the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials are key policies that may contribute decisively to maintaining the competitiveness and sustainability of European industry, and consequently, the safeguarding or creation of new jobs, especially in regions that were affected by restructuring due to globalization.
Topics addressed in the round-table discussions included
• Production, trade and consumption of energy and non-energy raw materials;
• Political, legal, administrative and societal challenges related with the secure access to raw materials from EU sources;
• Secondary raw materials and aspects related to the concept of “circular economy”;
• Health and Safety issues.
The objective of the round-table debates was to link the Member States’ economic and industrial policy along the value chain from raw materials to end-products and to develop strategies and overcome obstacles to maintain a well-functioning European industrial fabric by improving investment conditions and creating new jobs.
Main recommendations coming from the EESC Opinions on the Raw Materials Initiative
• The policy in raw materials domestic supply should take into account industry, environment policy and land-use planning as an integrated approach. The best practice in the field should be extended to new potential areas. Access to domestic resources within the Member States should be encouraged by providing the necessary balance between the environment and industrial development policies, as well as harmonised incentives for development and protection in extending existing sites and opening new ones where these are, on the one hand, economically and socially viable and desirable and, on the other, environmentally sustainable;
• The globalisation impact on the international supply of minerals should be properly assessed by the EU and Member States whenever the import of raw materials from outside prevails. European environmental and social standards should be observed when considering investment policy and industrial relocation. Access to raw material should be guaranteed for European Users and the strategic dependence of the EU should be reduced;
• Capacity building in European non-energy extractive industries bears upon a wide range of challenges, such as administrative barriers, the need to improve the sector’s image, the need for qualified manpower, management techniques, education and training;
• Improved efficiency of resource extraction processes depends on progress made in other sectors active in both mineral extraction and other areas and calls for cooperation between the European Commission and Member States;
• Better regulation through improved legal framework and permitting system; exchange of best practice in planning policies; cutting-down excessive administrative burden in the issuing of permits; facilitating exploration activities; promoting sustainable development in expanding extraction sites, and securing mineral deposits;
• Strengthening the compatibility of extraction and environmental protection by: extending best practice in and around Natura 2000; advocating the proximity principle in transport procedures in order to reduce pollution and costs, and improving access to resources;
• Reinforcing the mineral intelligence at the EU level by establishing a European geological capacity and a European Mineral Resources Information System, to be built on the basis of the capacities of the Member States’ National Geological Surveys;
• The EU should actively pursue raw materials diplomacy with a view to securing access to raw materials, and in so doing, contribute to creating funds and programmes focusing on capacity building that would support sustainable raw materials production and economic and social progress in developing countries;
• An inventory of best regulatory practices in the EU with regard to access to land for raw materials industries should be prepared with the view to simplifying procedures and reducing the sterilisation of mineral resources resulting from inadequate land use planning practices;
• The Commission should foster an objective methodology based on a full life cycle analysis to assess the validity of resource efficiency measures and of any ‘material substitution policy’;
• The Commission’s departments should strengthen recycling and facilitate the use of secondary raw materials in the EU and propose sound recycling, recovery and re-use strategies in non-EU countries by promoting best practices at international level.