16 July 2021
On Wednesday 14 July 2021, the European Commission published its "Fit for 55 Package", consisting of a package of legislative proposals in the field of energy and climate, and which should bring to life the EU’s goal of cutting, by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions by 55%, and reaching net zero emissions by 2050. You can read the SGI Europe press release on the package here.
Contact: Henriette Gleau
On Wednesday 14 July, SGI Europe launched the 8th edition of its CSR Label.
In this edition of the SGI Europe CSR Label, applicants will have the opportunity to assess their compliance level with agreed corporate social responsibility (CSR) international standards. With the help of independent experts, participants of the SGI Europe CSR Label can closely monitor, measure, and benchmark their CSR activities.
The self-assessment tool (available in 8 languages) is now available on the website csr.sgieurope.org. Participants can apply and test their compliance with CSR in a few steps for free. It will remain accessible until 14 October 2021.
This year, the SGI Europe CSR Label has the ambition to gather and certify the contributions of SGIs to support the citizens, businesses, and territories since the beginning of the COVID crisis, showing responsible behaviour, and their involvement in the recovery for a more resilient society.
Additionally, in this edition, the SGI Europe CSR Label will offer its participants a special learning event which will provide key knowledge on the ‘EU Taxonomy Regulation’, which will become one of the most important sustainability policy tools at European level.
Contact: Stefan Enica
On 12-13 July, the European Commission organised the “2021 Long-term Care and Pension Adequacy” high-level conference. The event provided a forum for joint reflection on the key findings of two reports - the 2021 Long-Term Care Report and the 2021 Pension Adequacy Report and their implications for social policies and reforms at both European and national level, in the context of fair recovery and digital and green transitions.
The conference brought together policy makers, social partners, civil society organisations, international organisations, experts and key stakeholders, discussing the overarching implications and avenues for joint action in addressing challenges identified in the reports. SGI Europe was invited to speak at this important conference and was represented by Guillaume Afellat, policy advisor for social affairs. He provided the audience with examples of National Social Partners’ work related to the implementation of the EU social partners autonomous framework agreement on active ageing and an intergenerational approach, and he shared with the participants the contribution of the SGI Europe Social Protection taskforce on the European Commission Green paper on ageing published earlier in the semester.
The 2021 Long-term care report provides an unprecedented in-depth overview of Member States’ policies in the field of long-term care in the dimensions of access and affordability, quality, workforce and informal carers, financing and sustainability. It also provides an overview of recent reforms in Member States and preliminary findings as to the impact of COVID-19 for LTC systems. The 2021 Pension adequacy report, the fourth edition of the report published every third year since 2012, follows the current living standards of older people as well as the impact of reforms on future pensions, allowing to observe how the income of older people in our ageing societies evolves.
Contact: Guillaume Afellat
On Tuesday 13 July, Member States’ Ministers of economy and finance at the ECOFIN Council adopted the first series of implementing decisions giving the green light for the disbursement of EU recovery and resilience funds to finance the national plans of twelve countries.
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain, which all requested pre-financing from their allocated funds, can now conclude grant and loan agreements with the Commission and therefore start receiving the necessary funding and resources to implement their plans.
Whilst pre-financing amounts to 13% of the whole allocated funds, further disbursements will be based and dependent on a positive assessment of the implementation and achievement of the milestones and targets set out in each individual national plan.
In the context of the first batch of disbursements and amid an improving economic outlook with the European Commission’s Summer Forecast pointing to an accelerating rebound compared to the previous Spring package, on Wednesday 14 July MEPs from the Committees on Budgets (BUDG) and Economic and Monetary Affair (ECON) held their second joint Recovery and Resilience Dialogue with Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President for an Economy that Works for People, and Paolo Gentiloni, Commissioner for Economy.
The meeting provided a timely opportunity to take stock of the latest state of play on the adoption and assessment of the Recovery and Resilience plans, progress with the monitoring and scrutiny from the European Parliament on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and discuss the estimates on the impact of the Facility together with the next steps.
Contact: Antonio Astolfi
Last week, the European Commission proposed within its Sustainable Finance Package the Delegated Act on Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy, which defines the obligatory rules on reporting on sustainable activities within the EU Taxonomy Regulation. The legal reporting rules will be based on the Commission‘s proposal of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) from 21 April 2021 and will extend the scope of previously existing Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD).
The goal of this proposal is to define who needs to report under the EU Taxonomy Regulation, and who can voluntarily choose to report on their sustainable activities to receive financial support. With new changes to the CSRD, all large companies that do not qualify as Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) under the Directive 2013/34/EU of the “Accounting Directive” will be required, when applying for sustainable finance, to report their activities under the rules of the EU Taxonomy. However, the extended scope does not impose new requirements for SMEs as defined under the Accounting Directive. This however changes for all enterprises that employ between 250 to 500 employees that are Listed Small (staff < 50, turnover ≤ € 8 million, balance sheet ≤ € 4 million) and Medium-sized (staff < 250, ≤ € 40 m turnover, balance sheet EUR 20 million) enterprises on the EU regulated markets. This means that SMEs are included only if they are listed, whilst non-listed SMEs are not obliged to report through the EU Taxonomy system. Micro-enterprises (staff < 10, turnover < EUR 700.000, balance sheet < EUR 350.000) are excluded in this obligatory reporting, even if they are listed, as well as non-EU companies.
Additionally, the Commission has proposed some exemption measures for listed and non-listed SMEs. In line with the proposed CSRD, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) will prepare a simplified voluntary sustainability reporting standard that will provide SMEs with a proportionate tool. SMEs listed on regulated markets could use these simpler standards to meet their legal reporting obligations, whilst non-listed SMEs could choose to use them on a voluntary basis.
Contact: Henriette Gleau
On 7 July 2021, the Commission published the results of the Evaluation of State aid rules for deployment of Broadband networks. The evaluation was conducted to assess how the Broadband Guidelines met the expectations of effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU added value.
Contrary to many sectoral state aid guidelines that were included in the 2019 initiated Fitness Check, the Broadband Guidelines were not part of that exercise, since, at the time, the rules were considered as fit and flexible enough to achieve the expectations of the Gigabit Communication. However, since then technological developments have rapidly accelerated (for instance 5G) whilst needs for better connectivity during the Covid-19 pandemic have increased, calling for an evaluation of the rules.
The evaluation has shown that overall, the rules were fit for purpose. However, further adjustments should be made to made to broaden the scope and improve the rules to increase the investments. Furthermore, the evaluation has shown that the rules do not fully reflect the EU connectivity objections and Green Deal policies and are at some points incoherent with the Gigabit Communication, the Broadband Cost Reduction Directive and the European Electronic Communications Code.
Importantly, the findings of the evaluation will serve as a basis for the potential revision and update process of the Broadband Guidelines. SGI Europe will monitor the future developments in this regard.
Contact: Manca Pocivavsek
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