EESC side by side with the European Commission in promoting Europe's green future

20 February 2020

The EESC throws its support behind the 2020 Commission work programme, underlining that civil society can make a valuable contribution to placing sustainable development at the core of people's personal and shared responsibility.

The EESC will support the Commission's drive to match aspirations with actions in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and to put sustainability at the heart of our individual and collective responsibility. At the plenary session held in Brussels on 20 February 2020, EESC president Luca Jahier backed this year's European Commission work programme and its focus on sustainable development for a greener Europe.

Speaking at a debate with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission's vice-president for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, Mr Jahier pointed out that the EESC welcomed the driving force behind the first Commission work programme, leading the transition to a fair, climate‑neutral and digital Europe. We fully support the European Green Deal as a key driver for change and therefore the EESC would be willing to set up a permanent dialogue on sustainable development, he declared.

The EESC has repeatedly called for an ambitious and coherent strategy to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, most recently in its contribution to the 2020 European Commission work programme and beyond, adopted in October 2019, where it stressed that an overarching EU 2050 strategy for sustainability was needed in order to implement the UN Agenda 2030.

Full press release on EESC


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