The new legislative term has just begun: what should Europe really do to safeguard competitiveness?
It is good to see that European competitiveness is now higher on the agenda of our political leaders than 5 years ago. The report from Enrico Letta (“Much more than a Market”) provides a good analysis of our constraints: our Single Market does not work properly, we need to scale up our capital markets, we need to integrate our energy market, we need to reduce the regulatory burden on companies. Most importantly, we need to re-establish a culture of entrepreneurship in Europe, where start-ups are rewarded, where companies have legal certainty when they make investment decisions.
In EURATEX Manifesto, we focus on 4 main topics: we need a smart industrial strategy, we need to reconcile sustainability and competitiveness, we need to rebalance our global trade relations, and we need to engage more with the consumers, when it comes to textiles and fashion.
So what is required is a coherent policy mix – including items related to trade, energy, innovation, education, regulation. The challenge will be to develop such a competitiveness strategy, which essentially requires “more Europe”. We’ll have to see if the new European Parliament will be supportive for this !
Green transition is at the heart of the EU textile strategy. What does it mean for your members? What areas-sectors should be prioritised?
The EU Textiles Strategy, launched in March 2022, was part of the Commission’s Green Deal, and therefore has a strong focus on the environmental footprint of our sector: reduce textile waste, reduce water consumption, promote circularity, increase transparency. EURATEX is fully supporting this ambition to develop a more sustainable textile industry; in fact, many of our companies are already heavily investing in this. Ideally, sustainability should become a source of competitiveness for EU textile and fashion companies, and not be considered a burden, or competitive disadvantage.
The critical point is how we turn that vision into reality. This EU Textile Strategy is being translated in a long list of new legislation, tackling the eco-design of textile products, reorganizing our waste management, introducing due diligence in the value chain, revising the label in our garments, restricting the use of certain chemicals, etc.
We are creating a new regulatory framework, which will enter into force in the next 3-5 years. Complying with this new framework will require adjustments and investments, in a sector with fierce global competition. So how to ensure that all operators – regardless of their production base – will indeed comply with these new rules? That is a critical question, especially when you realise that a vast majority of fashion products are made outside Europe, and imported via online platforms with very limited quality control. That is why EURATEX is pleading for this EU Textile Strategy to become a Global Textile Strategy, to maintain a level playing field, based on high quality standards.
I should also emphasise that this transition can only work if we have the consumers with us. There is a lot of pressure on the producers to make more sustainable garments, but if the consumer is not able or willing to buy such products, the entire strategy will fall apart. So we need to engage with the brands and retailers, to ensure more transparency, avoid greenwashing, and maybe offer fiscal incentives to consumers to buy more sustainable and longer lasting products.
Is there a need for upskilling and reskilling of workers? What Euratex is doing in this respect?
The skills dimension is definitely a structural problem that we have in our sector, as is the case for most industrial sectors. In the EU, we employ about 1.3 million people, but 30% of which is above 50 years old. A critical bottleneck for the textile industry is to attract (young) people and make sure these people have the right set of skills, to operate in a changing textile ecosystem. Apart from a lack of basic skills, 61% of the companies are in need of digital skills and 40% of the companies still have a green skills gap.
Joint efforts must be developed between the public authorities at EU, national and regional level, and our industry to launch new skills related initiatives, under the EU Pact for Skills. We should also make strong efforts to present the changing industry as an attractive, sustainable and more digital source of employment, and to promote a “culture of entrepreneurship”.
To put these ideas in practice, EURATEX has launched, with partners from the footwear and leather sector, 3 new projects which address these topics. We have also established a “TCLF Skills Alliance” (textiles, clothing, leather, footwear) to coordinate this work at EU, national and regional level.
How European projects and networks can support the ongoing renewal process of the sector? Any concrete example?
We are indeed asking the EU for supporting measures, to help our SMEs to make this transition, to invest in innovation and sustainability. In this regard, we are happy to have the first ever dedicated programme for textiles under Horizon Europe: Textiles for the Future. This is a recognition that the EU wants the textile and fashion industry to remain competitive, even if they put this strong pressure to become more sustainable.
The sector also needs to re-organise itself and work, more than in the past, in a broader ecosystem. If we want to stimulate recycling, we need to build a new circular value chain, connecting textile manufacturers, brands, collectors and sorters and recyclers. That is the purpose of our recent ReHubs initiative, which now gathers 25 large players from that value chain, who are committed to upscale textile recycling in Europe.
We also have the RegioGreenTex project (funded under the EU’s I3 programme), which offers direct investment support to textile SMEs on sustainability and circularity. We run
this project in close cooperation with the most important regional textile clusters in the EU (such as Biella and Prato in Italy).