ECESP Coordination Group meeting

Coordination Group meeting took place in hybrid form on January 21st, 2022.

With the opening remarks by the Chair of the Coordination Group, Ladeja Godina Košir, the meeting focused on summarising the achievements from the past year, including the recent Dubai Expo Circular Europe Days, future plans, the 2022 programme, and the annual ECESP conference. 

Mr. Patrick Child, Deputy Director General, DG ENV, European Commission, congratulated the ECESP on its Dubai events. There would be various key Commission initiatives over the coming year, beginning with the Sustainable Products Initiative (SPI). The Commission would also be promoting the right to repair, addressing greenwashing, working on key value chains (particularly textiles and plastics), tackling waste and labelling issues, and working on raising construction material performance.

The Secretariat presented the 2021 Annual Activity Report. The CG had worked in eight leadership groups (LGs) and 15 initiatives under their mandate of fostering debate, exchanging good practices and knowledge, acting as ambassadors and promoting interaction among stakeholders. The LGs reached out to other sectoral stakeholders using #EUCircularTalks (EUCTs). The CG initiatives included Circular Week 2021, biodiversity and climate issues. Circular Europe Days was an opportunity for the CG to showcase the LGs' work in 2021 on the international level.

Leadership Group themes 2022 and the initiatives by CG members have been discussed with a clear proposal to continue with the economic incentives, buildings and infrastructure, textiles, biodiversity, and procurement LGs, as well as proposals of LG on enabling circular behaviour through digitalisation and on cross-cutting issues such as circular value chains, climate, biodiversity and youth.

2022 Circular Economy Stakeholder Conference will take place in hybrid form on March 1st and 2nd with the high-level speakers joining in-person in Brussels: EVP Frans Timmermans, Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissioner Didier Reynders, EESC President Christa Schweng, and French Environment Minister Barbara Pompili. 

Agenda will cover moving to a joint efforts on sustainable products, experiences and perspectives from key product categories, consumers in the circular economy: new milestones to boost sustainable consumption. Parallel sessions will also be organised on biobased and biodegradable plastics, contribution of CE to tackle climate issues and EU market for secondary raw materials/recyclates (tbc).

Day 2 of the conference will be dedicated to the results of the leadership groups, the lessons learnt and the way forward.