If the EU wants to achieve its goal of climate neutrality by 2050 and not jeopardise the implementation of the Green Deal, trade policy will also have to make a contribution. Afterall, international trade with its global net of value chains and long transport routes, increasingly adds to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.  

Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis plans for EU trade policy to place more focus on the subject of sustainability. Apart from a future initiative at WTO level, a new EU complaint mechanism shall also lead to improvements. However, looking at the Commission’s past initiatives, expectations are rather low. a

The Commission has launched a consultation on EU competition policy and its contribution to achieving the Green Deal. From the point of view of the Chamber of Labour, it is clear that competition law has to be oriented towards a socially just transition to a climate-friendly economic system. This is the only way to achieve broad acceptance for this comprehensive change, which involves all actors and stakeholders.

On 13 November 2020, the Commission presented its new Consumer Agenda. In it, it introduced its vision as well as concrete plans for EU consumer policy from 2020 to 2025. This communication too focusses on more actions in respect of both green transition and digital transformation.

The Austrian Chamber of Labour supports many of the specific programmes and initiatives named in the roadmap for the strategy for chemicals. However, these programmes and initiatives, taken together, do not yet form a consistent strategy. Several of the challenges identified in the roadmap can only be addressed if more general principles are incorporated into the future strategy.

Without a change of production methods and consumer behaviour, the annual waste produced within the EU is expected to increase by 70% until 2050. To counteract such developments, the Commission published a Circular Economy Action Plan. The AK has subjected the Action Plan to a detailed analysis.

The AK supports the EU’s goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. It will require all instruments to achieve this: investments, enforcement orders and prohibitions, ecotaxes and other fiscal instruments, as well as soft measures such as awareness campaigns. The process of decarbonisation must focus on fairness and the interests of workers. Strategies for this so-called “Just Transition” must take the climate policy requirements seriously and at the same time place workers – not least in negatively affected sectors – at their centre.

The Communication from the European Commission on the European Green Deal contains - in addition to a plan for achieving the climate targets - many starting points for demands from the workers' perspective. The AK supports the European Green Deal in principle but emphasises that all measures within the framework of the European Grean Deal must be socially just and in the interests of the employees.