C 443/4
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
22.11.2022
anticipate and manage changes in the world of work, including through targeted support as, e.g., enhancing the necessary skills, ensuring social protection, and involving the whole society concerned in shaping the transition, as well as additional proposals to mobilise massive public and private investments to support the transitions, and increase the size and scope of the Just Transition Fund significantly to match the challenges.
2.6.
The EESC calls for ensuring that the EU regulatory framework will enable EU businesses, including SMEs, to become frontrunners in green business, while preventing the risk of displacing production and protecting against imports with greater negative environmental impact.
This applies especially to energy intensive industries.
The EESC also calls on support for SMEs to better understand and manage the increasing climate and environmental requirements targeted to them directly and indirectly.
2.7.
The EESC calls for strong innovation support to industries to develop and deploy green technologies, materials, products, production processes, and business models, by facilitating, for example, programs on hydrogen, batteries, semiconductors, carbon capture and usage, and circular economy practices in various fields such as in packaging.
2.8.
To enhance the EU’s global impact in climate change mitigation, the EU should provide EU industries with competitive conditions to seize the export opportunities provided by the global demand of climate technologies and solutions and thus increase the carbon ‘handprint’ of the EU.
2.9.
Industrial alliances are proving a successful method for developing large-scale and cross-border industrial projects in strategic fields.
These industrial alliances, together with Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs), are crucial for the recovery and promoting European standards and key technologies, in particular in areas where the market alone cannot deliver or is being distorted.
2.10.
Progress towards a real Energy Union should be strengthened to ensure the energy transition towards an affordable, safe, competitive, secure and sustainable energy system.
Considering the current challenges caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Commission should focus on measures that bring about the biggest benefits in terms of the entirety of the objectives of the Energy Union and contribute to the acute challenges and the longer-term goals simultaneously.
2.11.
The situation in Ukraine has led to the REPowerEU Communication (4) which, at the request of the European Council, was followed by the REPowerEU Plan with proposals (5) which, if properly implemented, can significantly accelerate both energy independence and sustainability of the European Union.
The goal of becoming independent of Russian gas and other fossil fuels requires both urgent diversification of suppliers and energy sources, enhanced solidarity and longer-term measures that promote the transition towards carbon-neutrality, taking into consideration the characteristics of different Member States and regions and the available alternative sources.
However, to ensure the success of the process, sufficient private and public investment must be mobilised, making full use of the RRF and cohesion policy funds, among others.
As already pointed out (6), the reduction of the demand for Russian gas by two thirds by the end of 2022 is a challenging task and would mean diversification, on the one hand, and primarily in the short term via LNG and biomethane, and on the other hand via energy efficiency and the expansion of renewables.
Infrastructural lock-ons that create future limitations on realistic alternatives should be avoided and investments should be focused as much as possible on renewables and supporting infrastructures.
Social partners and civil society must be closely involved in these policy proposals to ensure their social acceptance, sustainability and success.
Moreover, to increase the level of response to external crises, a permanent coordination structure at the Council of the European Union would be needed.
(4) (5) (6)
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_1511 https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/key-documents-repowereu_en EESC opinion ‘REPowerEU: Joint European Action for more affordable, secure and sustainable energy’ (OJ C 323, 26.8.2022, p. 123).