COTANCE and IndustriAll Europe have initiated a new social dialogue project ’Towards Zero Adverse Impact of the European Leather Industry – Green Deal Leather’.
The projects: Against backdrop of the new EU policy developments, COTANCE (Confederation of National Associations of Tanners and Dressers of the European Community), and industriAll Europe have agreed that they must further invest in protecting jobs in the leather sector and creating new ones by driving competitive sustainability and building a fairer, greener and more resilient European tanning industry.
- They will address key issues identified in their 2016 Joint Manifest and subsequent Roadmap towards 2025 (Joint Multiannual Work Programme) in a series of social dialogue projects.
- The initiative, implemented in seven countries covering over 80% of the sector’s companies and workers, will be developed through social dialogue.
- Two international workshops will be organised on the selected topics, printed and video material will be disseminated in a dedicated EU-wide campaign, and a final conference, scheduled in Brussels for 2024, will conclude the project, with a presentation of the results.
The issues: The latest of these projects will address two key issues in the tanning sector: (1) safety at the workplace and (2) the carbon footprint of leather.
- The project partners will collect the necessary data on both topics through surveys and official information, as well as interviews and other appropriate channels, to provide the sector’s operators and stakeholders with intelligence on both project strands.
The backdrop: The European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) and the EU Industrial Strategy have identified the textiles ecosystem, including the leather industry, as a priority sector in which the EU can pave the way towards a socially fairer, carbon neutral, circular economy. An EU Strategy for textiles will support it in this transition, repairing the short-term damage from the COVID-19 crisis in a way that also invests in the long-term future of the ecosystem.
