European Union

A press conference for the upcoming Textiles Recycling Expo to be held in Brussels this June discussed how the event could be a catalyst to spotlight real-world solutions and accelerate their adoption across the European market, especially at a time when the political and economic case for transformation is finally aligning—if only precariously—with technological readiness.

As the European Commission aims to simplify REACH – the most complex chemicals legislation in the world — the textile and clothing industry, represented by EURATEX, has called for a more efficient and coherent regulatory framework as a key essential to safeguard the competitiveness and innovation capacity of EU industry.

Seven natural fibre stakeholders have come together to appeal to the European Commission to put systems in place that will properly account for the environmental benefits of natural and organic fibres, and promote cooperation across EU institutions to support sustainable, resilient textile value chains.

Perspectives are varied, and it is not an open-and-shut case against US Prez Donald Trump as his political opponents would have us believe. The tariff calculations could be questionable and the unilateral announcement should be decried, but what’s amply clear is this: trade will never be the same again.

To succeed with the EU’s textiles strategy, a systemic shift in the textiles system is needed, moving towards higher quality, longer use, reuse, repair and recycling. The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) new module of the Circularity Metrics Lab (CML) on textiles analysed 14 metrics and came up with some key findings.

The five-point ‘EU Recyclers’ Manifesto: Increasing textiles circularity by 2030: Threading up circularity’ by EuRIC’s Textiles Branch, highlights the unprecedented crisis facing the region’s textile collection and recycling sector, worsened by rising costs, low demand, and the impact of ultra-fast fashion.

FEAD and EuRIC have come up with a set of recommendations to address the crises facing the post-consumer textile collection, sorting and recycling industries following the introduction of the EU-wide mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for textiles.

The T-REX (Textile Recycling Excellence) project, a consortium of 13 industry leaders, committed to developing a blueprint for a harmonised EU framework for textile-to-textile recycling, has emphasised the need for standardised definitions of recyclability, scalable recycling technologies, and policy measures that align with industry realities.

The European Parliament and Council have reached a provisional agreement on new measures to prevent and reduce waste from textiles across the EU. This provisional agreement will now have to be endorsed before undergoing legal linguistic revision and once formally adopted, member states will have up to 20 months to update their national laws to follow the new rules.

EURATEX has published its trade policy priorities for 2024–29, outlining the key steps needed to secure a resilient and competitive future for the European textile and clothing industry. The ‘position paper’ addresses critical challenges such as market access, regulatory compliance, and the alignment of trade, industrial, and energy policies.