On Wednesday 3 May the European Commission organised a dialogue between citizens and experts on the EU roadmap for climate transition.
This event, moderated by the Vice-President responsible for Inter-institutional Relations, Maroš Šefčovič, concluded the ‘Citizen Voices for the EU Climate Transition’ project, which consulted over 800 citizens and 260 national experts in a series of workshops in each Member State over a period of 15 months to identify concrete actions to ensure a fair and ecological transition and to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal.
The discussions were organised around three main issues: a sustainable food system, the energy performance of buildings and smart and sustainable mobility.
Urban agriculture and increased regulation. According to Jacqueline Broerse, Professor of Innovation and Communication in Health and Life Sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam, a regulatory gap was highlighted in the various discussions and exchanges. Citizens thus support the idea of having more on food labels to make them consistent across countries.
According to Ms Broerse, they want to include carbon dioxide emissions, packaging reduction and the application of VAT to food products. “So that if they’re more environmentally impacting the VAT would be higher”, she explains. On the consumption side, the focus was on promotional campaigns to buy food directly from farmers.
The desire for more specific education on how to adopt and maintain a healthy and sustainable diet, as well as better promotion of urban agriculture, “in order to decentralise the whole production”, was also reported by Jacqueline Broerse.
Energy performance of buildings. According to Ruth Kerrigan, an expert on energy-efficient buildings, while awareness has increased significantly over the past 2 years, the rate of renovation “is still not very high in the EU”. The project organised by the Commission aimed to understand why. During her speech, Ms Kerrigan explained that renovation is a complex and difficult subject to understand.
Also, “these costs can be quite considerable” and in all sectors the lack of capital is a major constraint, she says. Kerrigan advocates “helping people understand what they can actually do to their buildings”.
The expert believes that governments need to make a longer-term commitment both to these renewable energy projects and to better fund local energy agencies to increase their resources and capacity to accelerate the demand process.
“We can fund our public buildings 100% and while doing that provide upskilling and training for tradespeople to give people that training that we say we’re missing”, she said.
Green mobility. During the citizens’ discussions, Karen Vancluysen, Secretary General of POLIS, noted that there is a strong demand for the EU to play a role in education and awareness raising on sustainable transport.
Road pricing for existing roads, but also the need for higher carbon taxation for airlines and shipping, were also among the citizens’ suggestions.
In addition, Ms Vancluysen said she was “optimistic” that citizens would change their travel behaviour. “So they are okay with the restrictions on car use. They are okay with higher costs on polluting, provided as I mentioned, the alternatives are in place and therefore want a European Green Dealfor transport that is more technological” she concluded.
To read the conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/6pn (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)