7 May 2021
On Friday 7 May, Pascal Bolo, SGI Europe President, Valeria Ronzitti, SGI Europe General Secretary, and Luis Natal Marques, President of the Portuguese section of SGI Europe, will address EU leaders and heads of state and of government at the Porto Social Summit. This event will be a unique opportunity to highlight the central role of SGIs in shaping the future of the EU social model.
You can follow the event live on the website of the Portuguese presidency of the European Union.
On Wednesday, the European Commission presented an update to the EU Industrial Strategy. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that the EU industrial ambition takes full account of the new circumstances following the COVID-19 crisis and helps to drive the transformation to a more sustainable, digital, resilient, and globally competitive economy.
The updated Strategy reaffirms the priorities set out in 2020, whilst responding to the lessons learned from the pandemic to boost the recovery and enhance the EU's open strategic autonomy. It proposes new measures to strengthen the resilience of the Single Market. It also addresses the need to better understand our dependencies in key strategic areas and presents a toolbox to address them. It also offers new measures to accelerate the green and digital transitions, whilst responding to calls to identify and monitor the main indicators of the competitiveness of the EU economy as a whole.
Following the publication of the updated proposal, SGI Europe reacted with the following press release.
On 6 May, the European Commission organised a High-Level conference on the reviewed Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), where Commissioner Mariread McGuinness, Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank and Alexandra Jour-Schroeder, Deputy Director General at DG FISMA, addressed the amendments to the NFRD introduced through the proposal on the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive (CSRD).
The political importance has been highlighted by the speakers on multiple occasions, especially in the run-up to the EU Social Summit on 7 May. The new proposal aims at steering investment strategies towards contributing to the ambitions of the EU Green Deal for a more sustainable and socially balanced EU economy. The NFRD requires that certain large companies report on social, employee and environmental matters, human rights and bribery as well as corruption. With the new proposal of the CSRD, this threshold will now be eliminated and extend the reporting obligation of enterprises' activities and eliminate the previous criteria of 500 employees, making the reporting on Taxonomy mandatory for all large companies, which means all companies but SMEs.
Also, the coherence between various Commission legislative files on sustainable finance, including the EU Taxonomy Regulation, will need to be further clarified according to Mrs McGuinness, with upcoming adoption of the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy expected in June.
In parallel to the ongoing legislative process in the Council and the Parliament, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group will start to work on a first set of draft sustainability reporting standards. These draft standards will be considered by the Commission after the Parliament and Council have agreed a compromise text. EFRAG aims to have the first set of draft standards ready by mid-2022, with a possible adoption by the end of 2022 and implementation from 2024 at the earliest.
Contact: Henriette Gleau
On Wednesday 5 May, SGI Europe attended the meeting organised by the Subgroup 4 of the Platform on Sustainable Finance for discussing the Social Taxonomy draft report which will be finalized by the end of this year.
SGI Europe welcomes that the report includes the AAAQ (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality) framework for using fair criteria such as availability and accessibility for proving substantial contribution in promoting adequate living conditions in the selected sectors (healthcare, education, housing, water and food).
SGI Europe emphasised during the meeting the need for a broad perspective regarding the selected sectors which are essential services for large parts of society and not only for individuals and groups in situations of vulnerability.
SGI Europe underlines that a Social Taxonomy proposal should take into account the differences between the industrial relations’ systems across EU and protect the social partners’ autonomy, especially in the policy areas that fall within the scope of the social partners.
Contact: Stefan Enica
On 30 April 2021, Executive Vice President Margarethe Vestager answered the question from MEPs on the possibility of setting the whole electricity system in France as a service of general economic interest (an SGEI).
In her answer, EVP Vestager emphasised that Member States have wide discretion to impose public service obligations on electricity undertakings, as long as they comply with the EU Law. Therefore, a service of general economic interest (SGEI) must demonstrate that the service cannot be provided under normal market conditions, that the aid is necessary and proportionate, and that the entrustment of an SGEI does not affect the development of trade to such an extent that it would be contrary to the interests of the Union. EVP Vestager furthermore explained that the Treaty does not differentiate between public and private undertakings, which means that the national authorities are free to design a system of delivering public services. The role of the Commission is limited to the scrutiny of manifest errors to ensure a level playing field.
Contact: Manca Pocivavsek
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