26 April 2024
On Wednesday 24 April 2024, Valeria Ronzitti, SGI Europe General Secretary, addressed the Employers’ Group meeting of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). Stefano Mallia, President of the EESC Employers’ Group, opened the meeting, featuring Véronique Willems, SMEUnited Secretary General, and Christel Delberghe, Director General of EuroCommerce.
That meeting was an opportunity for Valeria Ronzitti to present to the members of the Employers' group SGI Europe's eight top priorities for 2024-2029:
SGI Europe's General Secretary also pointed out that two crucial preconditions are needed to address these priorities: the appointment of a European Commission Vice-President for SGIs and the establishment of an intergroup in the European Parliament dedicated to SGIs. You can find more about it in the SGI Europe Manifesto for the EU elections.
Finally, it was also an occasion to share the SGI Europe Position Paper “SGIs and the Future of the Single Market” with the Employers' Group members, which is the basis of our contribution to Enrico Letta’s report.
Contact: Benoit Cassorla
On Thursday 25 April, the European Parliament plenary approved the political agreement of the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) reached with the European Council on 6 February 2024. 361 MEPs voted “for”, 121 “against” and 45 abstained.
The text asks the European Commission and the Member States to support manufacturing projects in 19 defined net-zero technologies to reduce the EU’s strategic dependencies. The manufacturing capacity was agreed to have a benchmark of at least 40% of the EU’s annual deployment needs to technologies that will help reach the EU’s 2030 energy and climate targets. It is also set to reach 15 % of world production by 2040, except where the increased EU manufacturing capacity would be higher than needed to achieve EU 2040 climate and energy targets.
Whilst better provisions were also set for low and renewable technologies permitting procedures, SGI Europe regrets the adoption of the European Parliament's proposal of a minimum mandatory requirement on environmental sustainability criteria in public procurement procedures for contracting authorities. The set for such a minimum requirement list will be established under an implementing act by the European Commission. In addition, contracting authorities should apply at least one other condition for the contract relating to social or employment-related considerations, cybersecurity, or the timely delivery of the contract's component.
Contact: Henriette Gleau
The European Commission prioritised reducing the Single Market's administrative burden and highlighted the matter's importance in its 2024 Commission Work Programme. In this context, The Commission is promoting the timely agreement and widespread implementation of a common electronic format for posted worker declarations.
Member States may require service providers to declare the posting of workers to their territory to allow for inspections and ensure that workers’ rights are effectively respected. All Member States introduced such a declaration in practice, thus introducing a reporting obligation on posting companies.
This declaration of worker posting informs Member States' inspection services of the time and location of workers posted to their territory. It can facilitate risk assessment, monitoring of working conditions, and detection of fraud.
Differences among declaration procedures in each Member State, the often complex and cumbersome administrative process, the diversity of national portals, and different degrees of digitalisation and multilingualism represent a challenge for posting companies and subject them to different repetitive procedures. Employers have repeatedly raised concerns that the declaration has significantly increased administrative burden when posting workers to another Member State and creates barriers in the Single Market.
In this context, the Commission organises a social partners dedicated hearing on 29 April on the simplification of the posting declaration where the institution will seek to identify the main factors causing complexity for service providers declaring posting operations under the current situation and to determine what are the key features of the declarations to ensure the protection of posted workers’ rights and the enforcement of the posting legislation.
Contact: Guillaume Afellat
On Thursday, 18 April, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and Norway House organised a conference titled ‘Socially Responsible Public Procurement: Can the EU do more to advance decent work?’ The event brought together many representatives of European institutions and governments of member states of the European Economic Area, as well as social partners and multiple sectoral organisations.
On this occasion, speakers from the Oslo Municipality and Embuild, the Belgian construction association, presented how their organisations use Socially Responsible Public Procurement. In both cases, Socially Responsible Public Procurement has helped advance decent work and ensured that more tenders are awarded to companies which employ skilled workers and invest in the training of their employees.
Boris Verbrugge (KU Leuven) and Merete Clausen (European Commission) then discussed how Socially Responsible Public Procurement might be expanded during the European Commission's next mandate. So far, Socially Responsible Public Procurement has been implemented in some Member States, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, but is only included to a minimal extent in EU legislation. An update of the 2014 Public Procurement Package could be considered to fix this situation.
SGI Europe is closely following developments in public procurement, especially Green Public Procurement and Socially Responsible Public Procurement.
Contact: Ruben Sansom
In the framework of the Finance4EPSR project, SGI Europe has recently launched an initial survey on social sustainability reporting and sustainable financing frameworks. The survey aims to collect employers' perspectives and better understand the level of awareness of the role of non-financial reporting within the sustainable finance framework, including the EU Social Taxonomy. You can consult it here.
Please note that your responses will be treated strictly confidentially and will not be considered replies in your company's name but exclusively replies given by experts working in the field daily. In addition, the personal and organisational information gathered by this survey will only be used for analysis, will not be shared with third parties, and no individually attributable responses or comments will be made in the survey report.
Contact: Cecilia Martin
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