Kerstin Jorna, Director General of the European Commission’s DG for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), sought to allay MEPs’ concerns about the slow implementation of the ‘transition pathways’ foreseen in the new industrial strategy, during an exchange of views in the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) on Monday 28 November.
The question was raised by Tom Berendsen (EPP, Dutch), who was annoyed at the relative slowness of these transition pathways, these roadmaps created jointly with industry and all the players in a given ecosystem in order to achieve the dual green and digital transition by 2030. “What is needed to speed up the finalisation of these transition pathways?”, he repeated to the senior official.
For Mrs Jorna, the differences in speed are explained by the very diverse nature of the 14 ecosystems listed in the industrial strategy. “Some ecosystems need more time to organise themselves than others. I think tourism and the social economy have been very fast”, she explained.
She indicated that other roadmaps are about to be finalised, such as the one for the construction sector. She explained that the mobility ecosystem was waiting to see what direction European legislation would take before developing a collective transition pathway. For the chemical ecosystem, the strategy is quite different: the players in this sector want to shape the roadmap to influence the regulatory framework.
For her, the Industrial Forum must play a key role in accelerating the breakdown and circulation of best practice. “The tourism sector, for example, works with commitments, so the different actors commit and we have some kind of implementation method and what they get out of the sector”, she gave as an example, noting that this approach provides visibility and a best practice system for the different actors.
Public procurement
Furthermore, she stressed that the flexibilities in European public procurement rules are not sufficiently and uniformly applied across the EU. “So for an industry that is faced with such dispersed public procurement practices, it doesn’t allow for investment at scale upstream”, she concluded. She said that her services were working on guidelines.
“We have brought together the big buyers to specify their products or public procurement in the same way”, she added, citing the “renovation wave” in the construction sector.
Raw materials initiative for the end of the third quarter
Questions from parliamentarians also focused on the raw materials initiative (see EUROPE 13032/2). Here, the senior official has assured that an initiative will be presented by the end of the first quarter of 2023. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)