EN Official Journal of the European Union C 376/97

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the ‘Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the Committee of the Regions: A resource-efficient Europe — Flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy’

COM(2011) 21 final

2011/C 376/18

Rapporteur: Mr RIBBE

On 26 January 2011 the Commission decided to consult the European Economic and Social Committee, under Article 304 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, on the

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: A resource-efficient Europe — Flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy

COM(2011) 21 final.

The Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment, which was responsible for preparing the Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 6 September 2011.

At its 474th plenary session, held on 21 and 22 September 2011 (meeting of 22 September), the European Economic and Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 120 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions.

1. Summary

1.1 The EESC welcomes the flagship initiative entitled A resource-efficient Europe, but considers it to be too vague. Given the global dimension of key environmental issues, the Committee refers to its proposals for the UN Conference on sustainable development in 2012 and to its work on the Low Carbon Roadmap 2050 (1).

1.2 It expects the Commission to describe in precise detail within the 20 individual initiatives:

— what exactly is meant by ‘resource efficiency’;

— what can already be achieved simply through technical optimisation; and/or

— which sectors require the ‘significant transition’ it refers to, what this should look like in each case and what instruments are to be used to achieve this; and

— what specific behavioural changes on the part of producers and consumers are considered necessary and how these can be speeded up.

1.3 There is no doubt at all that the EU 2020 Strategy must pave the way for a sustainable - and thus also resource-efficient - economy. It would nonetheless be sensible to maintain a separation of tasks between the sustainability strategy and the EU 2020 Strategy.

1.4 The EESC does not understand why the resource efficiency strategy has been included in the EU 2020 Strategy. It considers the former to be a concrete expression of the sustainability strategy adopted in 2001 and revised in 2006, if nothing else because the timescale extends well beyond the year 2020. The EESC calls for the sustainability strategy, which it considers the Commission to have neglected, to be revived.

2. Preliminary remarks

2.1 Shortly before the Commission requested the EESC to draw up this opinion on the Flagship Initiative entitled A resource-efficient Europe, the Committee Bureau had decided to draw up an own-initiative opinion on the situation and current state of play of the EU's sustainability strategy.

2.2 The EESC's bodies decided to bring both topics together into this opinion.

3. A resource-efficient Europe – Flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 Strategy

3.1 The flagship initiative entitled A resource-efficient Europe, published by the Commission and commented on in this opinion, is one of seven new flagship initiatives that the Commission is including in the EU 2020 Strategy.

3.2 In its Communication, the Commission states – not for the first time – that the current intensive pace of resource use not only is putting excessive pressure on the planet's environment, but also constitutes a threat to security of supply, all the more so as emerging and developing countries aspire to a similar level of prosperity, one which is based on unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.

3.3 Under this flagship initiative, a total of 20 individual initiatives aimed at building a resource-efficient Europe are to be published in the course of 2011. According to the Commission, this can be achieved only through ‘technological improvements, a significant transition in energy, industrial, agricultural and transport systems, and changes in behaviour as producers and consumers’.

3.4 The Commission states that ‘new products and services and … new ways to reduce inputs’ are needed and that, to this end, coordinated action must be taken and must have political support.

3.5 First, however, there must be ‘a coherent analysis of the reasons why some resources are not used efficiently’ in order to achieve a ‘complex and interlocking approach that optimises synergies and addresses trade-offs between different areas and policies’.

3.6 The overarching aim of this flagship initiative is to forge ‘an agreement on the long-term vision’ that lasts until 2050 and sets out what a low-emission economy looks like, how energy and transport systems can be modernised and how ‘economic growth can be decoupled from resource use’.

4. General comments on the flagship initiative entitled A resource-efficient Europe and on its relationship to the Sustainable Development Strategy

4.1 The EESC welcomes the Commission's initiative, which it considers to be an important, indeed central part of the sustainable development strategy – but not a substitute for it.

4.2 It agrees with the Commission that the EU 2020 Strategy must pave the way for longer-term goals from now until 2050 and beyond. It wonders, however, why the Commission is coupling this flagship initiative with the EU 2020 Strategy, rather than putting it forward as a concrete expression of the sustainable development strategy, which would make much more sense. The mere fact that the Commission communication makes more references to the 2050 timeline than to the year 2020 demonstrates that this is a long-term issue.

4.3 The Commission's statement that technological improvements, a significant transition in energy, industrial, agricultural and transport systems, and changes in behaviour on the part of producers and consumers are all needed, is in keeping with the EESC's stance as set out in its exploratory opinion dated 28 April 2004 on Assessing the EU sustainable development strategy. However, even back then the EESC pointed out that, for a sustainability policy to succeed, it is essential to set out in the most concrete terms possible what changes are needed and how these are to be implemented.

4.4 This is precisely what is missing from the communication. It does make good reading but is too vague. The EESC therefore considers it vital that the forthcoming 20 individual initiatives describe very precisely what must change and how; where exactly resistance to change is to be expected; and how, i.e. with what specific measures, such resistance is to be overcome.

4.5 That said, the EESC considers the structure adopted by the Commission, made up of

— technological improvements,

— significant transition, and

— changes in behaviour as producers and consumers

to be very useful. Accordingly, the Commission should make clear what can be achieved through technological improvements, where these reach their limits, and what makes significant transition necessary in certain areas of life and business.

4.6 First, however, the ‘coherent analysis’ referred to in the communication is needed to look at why some resources are still being used so inefficiently. It is precisely the lack of such an analysis which we consider to be a shortcoming of the communication.

4.7 The EESC agrees only to a very limited extent with Commission's theory that resource inefficiency is the result of no information being available as to its true cost to society. After all, for example, the costs of looming climate change and of biodiversity loss are described in impressive terms in the Stern Report and the TEEB Report respectively. Yet nothing has fundamentally changed.

4.8 The reasons for the current inefficiency are more likely to be:

a) there is as yet no real consensus in society about the assessment of the current situation (‘What is efficient/not efficient? How sustainable/unsustainable are we/certain sectors of the economy really at the moment?’);

b) there is a considerable lack of clarity as to what sustainable development, a ‘green economy’ or a ‘resource-efficient economy’ therefore means in practice. There is no clear, universally valid statement or definition of what this means for each individual policy area;

c) there are – depending on one's interest-based standpoint – utterly divergent views as to what needs to change, both in quantitative and in qualitative terms, how things need to be done differently in the future compared to how they are done now, and how these changes will affect daily life and business.

4.9 The Commission is right to state in the communication that unsustainable economics at present leads to the prosperity that many people enjoy (and which is denied to others). The negative consequences of unsustainable economics will impact fully on future generations and have to be borne by them.

4.10 Recognising this and drawing the necessary consequences from it is something that politicians and business, as well as civil society, find difficult. The fact that few people can imagine how a ‘new kind of prosperity’ could be ensured whilst, for example, using only a tenth of the energy input, does not make it any easier. These uncertainties generate fears and unease that must be handled with great sensitivity (2).

Technical optimisation, significant transition and changes in behaviour

4.11 Compared to the new aims set out in the flagship initiative (80-95 % reduction in CO2), the quantitative targets so far set in the EU, e.g. reducing CO2 emissions by 20 % by 2020, look pretty harmless. After all, a 20 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved relatively easily, given the technical inefficiency remaining in the current system and technical improvements brought in with new technologies. However, implementation of even the current, manifestly still inadequate target has met – and continues to meet – with many voices ‘warning’ that ‘economic competitiveness’ could be jeopardised even with the heralded technical measures and optimisation. The result: not even that which is to a great extent feasible through technical optimisation without cutting back on consumption is being implemented consistently. It is clear that the resistance to more far-reaching measures (‘significant transition’) will be even greater.

4.12 The EESC considers that it is worth pointing out very clearly that technical efficiency optimisations certainly have a very significant role to play in reaching targets. However, even the most resource-efficient technologies must not automatically be equated with ‘sustainability’. Just one example: The German car industry, which succeeded in blocking the strict emission ceilings proposed by the Commission (120 g CO2/km), is proud of its new technical developments. Audi, for example, is trumpeting the fact that the new A7 (with a 2.7 litre engine and 180 PS output) consumes ‘only’ around 6.8 litres of diesel per 100 km (34.5 mpg) – and thus emits 180 g CO2/km. If one compares this with the values that were emitted in the past in the equivalent vehicle class, this certainly represents significant technical progress, but this has nothing to do with sustainability. An Audi A7 is neither sustainable nor resource-efficient! It is not an expression of a new ‘green economy’, but rather clear evidence that scarce raw materials can also be consumed by purportedly efficient technologies, and that an entirely new mobility policy for people and goods is needed.

4.13 The EESC regrets that, in the flagship initiative, the Commission makes only a brief, passing reference to the absolutely pivotal issue, namely that the current social prosperity model of the western world is too heavily based on the use of cheap energy and on a rising, often inefficient, input and turnover of materials.

4.14 The flagship initiative or, better still, a revitalised sustainable development strategy does need to address this very issue much more forcefully. The Commission communication refers in some places to ‘trade-offs’ that hinder a resource-efficient approach, but these are neither clearly described nor is there any indication of what the policy proposes to do about them.

4.15 The difficulty of dealing with such trade-offs is nowadays clearly apparent in Germany, where it has been decided to undertake a fundamental overhaul of the energy sector without jeopardising the aim of CO2 reduction.

Significant transition

4.16 The major task we now face is to describe, develop and implement the ‘significant transition’, this ‘new’ economy and consequently a new kind of economic competitiveness (even by global standards). The days of cheap energy and raw materials are, thanks to their overuse, drawing to an end. We have a duty to future generations to learn to share these now scarce environmental goods. Politicians therefore need to state much more clearly that, in reality, the competitiveness of an economy that is based on cheap energy and the over-exploitation of natural resources and, furthermore, can externalise environmental costs, is simply not viable in the long term. In socio-political terms, our aim cannot and must not be to maintain such an economy, but to transform it.

4.17 The flagship initiative on A resource-efficient Europe can make a significant contribution to this aim, but cannot achieve it on its own because the question of resource efficiency does not address other aspects of sustainability. That is why the sustainable development strategy was developed. This must describe and bring about Europe's gradual social and economic transition, linking it to issues of intergenerational justice and fairer distribution.

4.18 The flagship initiative does not even manage to define the concept of ‘resource efficiency’. This is a further shortcoming that the EESC would like to point out. It would be welcome if the latest technologies deemed to be resource-efficient were described for each product, procedure and sector, in keeping with the top runner principle. Indeed, the Commission has already taken some initial steps in this direction, for example with the energy labelling of refrigerators.

4.19 There is no doubt that a variety of instruments are needed in order to bring about a transition to resource-efficient structures. One of these is product pricing, which, according to the Commission, will play an important role. Its statement that we ‘must place greater emphasis on “getting prices right” and making them transparent to consumers … so that prices reflect the full costs of resource use to society’ is thus correct. However, this really is not a new discovery in the year 2011. Nor is it new that the EESC has repeatedly called for a corresponding ‘internalisation of external costs’. The trouble is, far too little is happening. This is not solely the fault of the Commission and the Member States, but is also due to resistance from sectors of the economy that do not see the benefit of it, but will, on the contrary, be ‘negatively’ affected by the necessary significant transition. Political leaders must overcome such resistance step by step.

4.20 In order to achieve this, it is indispensable to set out how it is proposed to ‘get prices right’ and ‘make them more transparent’. However, there are no such indications in the strategy.

5. Interaction between politics and civil society, resource efficiency, Europe 2020 and sustainability. Or: good governance is required.

5.1 If only slow progress is being made towards sustainable development, the establishment of a green economy and the transition to a resource-efficient economy, politicians would be well advised to think carefully about why this is. The EESC has already mentioned a few answers above.

5.2 Slowly, very slowly, the realisation is dawning that the changes to today's economic system really do need to be ‘significant’ if we are to be truly able to talk about sustainable development. The EESC welcomes the fact that the Commission communication mentions some specific figures in this connection: for example, that CO2 emissions in the EU will need to be reduced by 80 % to 95 % by 2050. EU Commission President Barroso, when these targets were mentioned for the first time, spoke of a ‘new industrial revolution’ that stands before us or that we must bring about.

5.3 In the context of this debate, the EESC would point out once again that it considers a fundamental debate on the concept of growth to be overdue. The Commission and the Council will be aware of the relevant Committee opinions on Beyond GDP. These make clear that the old economic mantra ‘growth is prosperity’ no longer works.

5.4 Sadly, not enough is said about this either in the flagship initiative or in the EU 2020 Strategy. On the contrary: one could infer from their content that ‘growth’ in itself is a virtue.

5.5 The EU 2020 Strategy says that three priorities should be at ‘the heart of Europe 2020’:

— Smart growth – developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation;

— Sustainable growth – promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy;

— Inclusive growth – fostering a high-employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion.

These three priorities are mutually reinforcing; they offer a vision of Europe's social market economy for the 21st century.

5.6 The EESC wonders what sort of signal the Commission and the Council want to send out with such statements. Is society to infer that there used to be growth that was not based on knowledge and innovation? Have not high employment and social and territorial cohesion always been policy aims? And do these various ‘growth philosophies’ automatically lead to sustainable development? If so, why do the Commission and the Council no longer use the term ‘sustainability’? Why is it that a vision of ‘Europe's social market economy for the 21st century’ is being set out, and not, for instance, one of a ‘green social market economy’?

5.7 For example, the Commission knows perfectly well that coherent resource conservation can cause gross domestic product to fall, not rise. If all conventional incandescent light bulbs are, as a result of the ban on their sale, replaced with energy-saving bulbs, and if buildings are properly insulated and all energy saving measures implemented, then energy consumption, for example, will fall dramatically, and with it GDP. The EESC would therefore point out once again that:

— ‘growth’ needs to be redefined, and

— GDP is not a measure that provides information about happiness, prosperity, the state of the environment, health or social justice.

The new industrial ‘revolution’ - a revolution in responsibility

5.8 When Commission President Barroso talks about a ‘new industrial revolution’, he is right only as regards the radical nature of possible changes. The future demands a new model of production and consumption. Barroso of course knows perfectly well that the concept of ‘revolution’ is, from a socio-political perspective, totally out of place and can kindle a great deal of fear. Revolutions are started by oppressed majorities who want to change an unacceptable situation quickly and permanently and so rise up against their ‘rulers’.

5.9 However, no such situation arises in the debate about sustainable development or resource efficiency. Far from there being an oppressed majority that would rebel against despotic structures, the public mood tends more towards the idea that people live well in a society that, each year, consumes as much oil as was produced in around five million years and drives 10 000 times as many species to extinction as would disappear in the process of evolution.

5.10 The challenge and the question, then, is how to develop a collective sense of responsibility towards future generations amongst those alive today; in other words, how to build up pressure for real change that may involve sacrifices.

5.11 It is absolutely crucial that civil society and business are properly included in this process from the outset. Precisely this was and is the job of the EU sustainability strategy which was adopted in Gothenburg in 2001.

The EU Sustainable Development Strategy: where are we now?

5.12 The EESC has for many years been attentively and actively following the EU sustainable development strategy adopted by the European Council in 2001. From the outset, the EESC has called for precisely this long-term strategy to be given the greatest possible attention.

5.13 The EESC has consistently (and frequently) called for the sustainable development strategy to provide the public, business and associations, but also politicians, with clear guidelines and thus qualitative and quantitative targets. These should form the basis for decisions to be taken in the short to medium term, and the target visions of the sustainable development strategy should guide all EU policy areas.

5.14 Equally often, however, the EESC has had to lament the fact that, in its view, the sustainable development strategy is not only far too vaguely worded, but also neglected at the political level.

5.15 The Committee also welcomed the fact that the European Council gave it a special role in the revised sustainable development strategy of 2006, namely asking it to prepare contributions specifically for the progress reports to be drafted every two years by the European Commission. Although such progress reports were published by the Commission in 2007 and 2009, and the Committee evaluated and commented on these after the event, the contributions the EESC was supposed to make were not requested by the Commission before these reports were drafted.

5.16 If the two-year cycle laid down by the European Council is to be maintained, the next progress report ought really to be published this year. However, everything indicates that this will not happen. No contributions from the EESC have yet been requested by the Commission.

5.17 In the Commission Work Programme 2011 (3) there is no indication that the Commission will produce such an interim report, nor indeed is the sustainable development strategy mentioned anywhere at all in the 51-page document. Reference is made to an incredible multitude of the most diverse EU strategies, but not to the Sustainable Development Strategy. The EESC finds this profoundly regrettable.

5.18 It has, then, all gone remarkably quiet on the sustainable development strategy front – too quiet, the EESC would say. Many of the political promises that were made as part of the sustainable development strategy, such as producing a list of environmentally-damaging subsidies, have not been kept. The day-to-day political agenda is concerned only with the EU 2020 Strategy, which for its part does not really refer to the sustainable development strategy.

5.19 The fact that there is now almost no political debate or communication on the sustainable development strategy sends a very bad signal to civil society. The EESC wonders why this is the case and what society should make of it. The Commission needs to realise that people are starting to get the impression that the numerous crises (4) of recent months and years have demanded so much (undivided) attention from politicians that long-term policies have been put on the back burner as a consequence.

5.20 At the same time, more and more people are wondering – quite rightly, in the EESC's view – whether these crises that are accumulating across a range of very different policy areas a) are not interlinked or b) are a symptom and/or consequence of unsustainable economics.

5.21 Certainly, the Council presidency report entitled Review of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (2009) (5) does suggest that at least the Council understands that this is indeed the case. The first sentence reads ‘Current developments are in many respects not sustainable; limits on the carrying capacity of the earth are being exceeded and social and economic capital is under pressure. Although it has been stated repeatedly that change is necessary, results are limited.’ At its heart, the report is a plea on behalf of the sustainable development strategy, which ‘constitutes a long-term vision and an overarching policy framework providing guidance for all EU policies and strategies … The challenge lies in ensuring that the SDS has a real influence on EU policies … to ensure coherence between short and long-term objectives and between different sectors’.

5.22 However, the overarching policy framework which the EU sustainable development strategy is supposed to constitute, as called for by the EESC and also considered necessary by the Council, therefore now still exists – at best – only as a demand in old documents and a few speeches, but no longer in political reality. Neither the flagship initiative nor the EU 2020 Strategy can fill this gap.

5.23 The EESC sees that there is a serious risk that the public will be unable to keep up. Not only because in the meantime it has become utterly unclear which strategy is now in place and is binding, but also because the terms themselves are confusing. The EU 2020 Strategy goes on about many different kinds of growth, but the concepts ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ are no longer anywhere to be seen.

5.24 The EESC therefore thinks that it is high time for the Commission to state very clearly how the Europe 2020 Strategy and the sustainability strategy tie in with each other. It once again calls for the sustainability strategy to be revived and for the EU 2020 Strategy to be considered as an extremely important building block in paving the way for transition in key sectors of the economy.

Brussels, 22 September 2011. The President of the European Economic and Social Committee Staffan NILSSON

(1) EESC Opinion on ‘Rio+20: towards the green economy and better governance - The contribution of European organised civil society’ and EESC Opinion on ‘A Roadmap for moving to a competitive low carbon economy in 2050’ (see page 110 of this Official Journal).

(2) The EESC referred specifically to this in its Exploratory Opinion on ‘Assessing the EU sustainable development strategy’ (see OJ. C 117, 30.4.2004 pages 22-37 of this OJ), where it unsuccessfully asked the Commission to pay particular attention to this state of affairs.

(3) COM(2010) 623, 27.10.2010.

(4) To name but a few: the financial/euro, energy, climate, biodiversity and hunger crises.

(5) Council document 16818/09, 1.12.2009.