Milan, 17/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - 4.2 million green jobs created in the EU between 2002 and 2011, that is, in a period of crisis. On the basis of this promising observation, a decisive political step was taken in Milan on Thursday 17 July towards the recognition of the crucial role played by environment policies in growth and employment in Europe, at the first-ever informal Environment/Social Affairs Council.
At the end of this first session of its kind of the environment ministers and their employment colleagues on Thursday, dedicated to growth and green jobs and which also involve representatives of civil society (see other article and EUROPE 11122 and 11121), all parties stressed this. Similarly, all welcomed the legitimate demand, made the day before by the environment ministers, that this recognition be reflected both in the governance of the European semester and in the revision of the EUROPE 2020 strategy “for intelligent and inclusive sustainable growth” and by adopting the resources to succeed in breaking the link between economic growth, the use of resources and negative environmental impacts.
The environment ministers are determined that the EU must reinforce the environmental dimension of this strategy. They take the view that its mid-term review, scheduled for March 2015, offers a unique opportunity to twin the environmental and economic ministers more and increasingly coherently, otherwise resource-efficiency, the EU's new standard, will never take off. In so doing, they laid the foundations of their contribution for the preparation of the annual growth review for 2015 and the mid-term review of the strategy EUROPE 2020.
“The environment policy should be an integral part of employment policies at European level. It will be the responsibility of the Environment Council of 28 October concretely to translate the indications into political conclusions to revisit the governance of the European Semester”, Gian Luca Galletti, President of the Environment Council, told the press (our translation). He added: “we will ask the heads of state to put the environment among their major priorities, on the same footing as the economy and employment. This is a paradigm shift, a change of model. The environment policy had never before been seen as a common driver of growth”. He went on to say that this first joint session was “a successful operation”, which sends out “a cultural and political message, a message of total change”.
All agreed that a structural change must be envisaged. This is the holistic approach adopted by the Commission in its package of initiatives in favour of the circular economy. We intend to introduce an objective of resource productivity into the EUROPE 2020 strategy, as “resources and labour deserve more attention, because they have a considerable influence on productivity”.
Support for a resource-efficiency target. The transition to a green, low-carbon economy which is resilient to climate change and makes effective use of its resources requires us to turn our backs on spending on resources in favour of spending on innovative equipment with high added value, and in recycling and reuse techniques. Janez Potocnik, Commissioner for the Environment, stressed that this transition to zero waste is the bedrock of the package of initiatives on the circular economy presented by the Commission on 2 July to maximise job opportunities in the green economy (see EUROPE 11113). He noted that there is majority support among the member states for a political resource-efficiency objective, together with an indicator (the index of raw material consumption in relation to GDP), which will be “non-binding, non-sectoral”.
The day before, Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, said: “Today, Europe employs 4.2 million people in the eco-industries. This is one of the sectors in which employment is constantly growing, even during the crisis”.
Giuliano Poletti, the Italian minister for employment and president-in-exercise of the Employment and Social Affairs Council, welcomed the consensus reached on the need to start a process of transition towards a green, low-carbon economy, “properly to manage this transition and properly to manage the employment market in this process”. He said that this maiden meeting on the ecological developments of the economy and production, which had led to “consensual reflections on the method”, would be the first of many, to allow the employment and environment ministers to promote dialogues on “work and education, work and the economy” with the education and economy ministers. He stressed the importance of working towards energy efficiency and raw materials efficiency in order to break with former habits, which promoted work productivity to the detriment of energy and resource productivity. This paradigm change will require the tax burden on employment to be transferred to the energy plank (see other article in this bulletin). (AN)