At their informal meeting which began in Stockholm on Tuesday 18 April (see EUROPE 13162/2), the EU environment and climate ministers were all invited to be accompanied by a business leader demonstrating a successful green transition.
Indeed, the Swedish Presidency was keen to make the alliance between competitiveness and sustainable development the main focus of these discussions.
Divided into small groups during the different sessions, the political and business leaders discussed various aspects of sustainable development, such as the circular economy, biodiversity and climate issues, in the face of the challenge of increasing competitiveness within EU industry. The aim was also to highlight the various obstacles that the companies present have faced or are still facing as part of the transition to a green economy.
Ahead of the discussions she led, the Swedish Minister for the Environment and Climate, Romina Pourmokhtari, justified the unprecedented format of this informal meeting: “As a politician who is aiming to better our climate and environment, sometimes you tend to prioritise the climate crisis lower than an economical crisis instead of making best use of the situation”. By inviting companies, the Swedish minister aimed to reflect on how to increase European competitiveness by enabling them to thrive in a sustainable “and increasingly fossil fuel-free” economy.
According to Ms Pourmokhtari, one of the main barriers to businesses’ green transitions is economic thresholds, i.e. the threshold beyond which the damage caused is sufficiently large to justify the cost of intervention to eliminate or mitigate the risks that cause the damage, which may be the case for climate risk.
“The economic threshold can be a big pushback for the companies that want to make a transition but see the see the costs of it instead of the future benefits. We need to make sure that the economic thresholds are lowered and that we rationalise our assets to move in the right direction”, said Romina Pourmokhtari.
She continued: “That is also why we've invited for example the European investment bank and other representatives who are from the financial side to discuss”. For the Swedish minister, this is a major issue and “an important focus for us to have in the upcoming months”, particularly during multilateral discussions.
On arrival, several ministers and speakers welcomed the openness of the discussions to business. This was the case for the Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera. She will take over from her Swedish counterpart in July.
“The Council Presidency wanted to establish a dialogue with industry, and without the whole of civil society, including business and industry, it is impossible to transform our production system”, said Ms Ribera. It is, she said, “impossible to think of economic prosperity without social and environmental prosperity and balance”. The Spanish minister called for a better integration of environmental aspects into all economic decisions: “Between the environment and economic competitiveness, we can sometimes find common ground”. Teresa Ribera sees this objective as a “major issue”, which she says she will “pursue” in the second half of the year. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)