Opinion: SGIs in the Green Re-industrialisation - Paving the way towards implementing the EU Green Deal

Executive summary

• SGI Europe committed to the EU Green Deal as a growth strategy on the condition that SGIs are enabled to perform and recognised as a leading entity to drive this transition. Europe and its Services of General Interest providers understand that reaching the energy and climate ambitions means that the socio-economic system must be completely remodelled to fit into the EU green reindustrialisation.
• Sustainability means long-term planning, secure investment strategies, the political will and consistency to enable a new competitive EU single market fit for the Green Deal.
• SGI Europe stresses the need to quickly follow up on the recommendation of the European Commission’s 2040 Climate Targets to start a structural dialogue and call for a Climate Dialogue with social partners as well as the Commission’s recommendations to continue the engagement with industry and social partners within the Clean Transition Dialogue.
• SGI Europe calls on the European Commission to involve SGI Europe in the European Net-Zero Industry Academies.
• SGI Europe deems it important to set up a “Fit for Green Skills” package that guides enterprises, industries, and their workers to be ready and fit for the Green Deal jobs.  This could include a new social observatory of the social consequences of climate change, which would add value to monitoring accessibility measures for services of general interest.
• Recognise the investment challenge of the energy transition and make it a priority to ensure that energy becomes affordable and decarbonised first to enable all other sectors in the transport, water, waste and telecommunication to follow their transition paths.
• All EU funds must be technologically neutral and must not only support new potential EU supply chains but also solidly existing supply chains in the EU to prevent their transformation in imports with the closure of factories in Europe and opening of factories abroad.
•  A greening of the economy will be substantially encouraged through the transport sector and the associated shift of traffic from road to rail and public transportation. Providing financial resources for the public transport sector means investing in sustainable mobility, jobs, and social participation at the same time.
• SGI Europe fully supports introducing the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme as a key financial instrument for the protection of water resources and wastewater treatment. At the same time, the EPR scheme within the Waste legislation must significantly be improved and further adapted to show effects on the market and the environment.
• SGI Europe supports the recommendations of the European Economic and Social Committee’s Blue Deal Declaration and calls upon the European Commission to a clear prioritisation for the EU agenda on a Water Resilience framework, where water is treated as a multi-usage public source and raise awareness to people of the importance of water in all areas of society - from civil, industry, energy and agricultural use.
• This particularly applies to measures to ensure the supply of drinking water, including the need for adjustments on the demand side.
• In a water shortage situation, the public drinking water supplies must be given priority over other users
• SGI Europe calls upon the next European Commission to anticipate the coming climate crisis by addressing it by building a resilient critical infrastructure in a holistic and structural approach.