On the 7th of May 2014 UCL&ISR hosted a stakeholder event in Brussels to discuss preliminary findings from task 1.2 on Lessons from the EU policy experiences. The event aimed to generate debate about the opportunities and challenges of the current EU policy framework on resource efficiency. Members of POLFREE’s research team and a selected mix of stakeholders, including policy-makers, industry representatives, NGO’s and academia, attended the event.

The half-day workshop was structured around a number of short keynote presentations on the areas of waste and materials, land, water, transport and energy and climate change, which were followed by working sessions on each of the areas. Speakers included Paul Ekins (UCL&ISR), Teresa Domenech (UCL&ISR), Michael Warhurst (foe), Pieter de Pous (EEB) and Nina Renshaw (T&E). Conclusions from the working sessions were then reported to Mr Stephen White and Mr Werner Bosmans, senior policy officers from DG ENV.

A number of policy gaps in the current legislative framework were discussed. Overall, the EU strategy on resource efficiency has concentrated on the area of energy and climate change. The strategy Europe 2020 defines clear targets in terms of GHG emission reduction and renewables penetration. The EU is a pace setter at the international level in this area, which has facilitated the introduction of an ambitious policy internally. The energy efficiency target though remains aspirational and is unlikely to be met unless additional measures are taken. In the area of materials, EU policy framework has concentrated primarily on the output side of the material cycle, that is, waste, although there is an emerging agenda on materials, led by the raw material initiative and its continuation (policy strategy to address the challenges in the commodity markets). Here, in the absence of clear scientific models of (material) scarcity, quantitative targets are unlikely to be agreed at the EU level, although a guiding objective of 30% increase of material productivity by 2030 as proposed by the EREP in its last set of recommendations, is possibly a feasible starting point. The implementation gap was also debated in the event. Profound differences still persists in terms of performance between MSs. Moreover, the EU has limited competences to act on a number of areas such as taxation. A number of specific gaps in the areas of waste policy, transport and energy were also discussed in the working sessions. Feedback and discussion from the event has been incorporated into the D 1.2 Report on lessons from EU policy experiences (available to download from the website).

The panel discussion pointed to the role of innovation and technological development to address some of the current challenges, the relevance of R&D and the need to work in the inter-linkages between energy, climate change and materials policy. There was also a discussion about the need to combine incremental policies with more radical approaches that could set the basis for a new development model.