New Green Deal Leather Project

Content published by: COTANCE

On 9 September 2022, COTANCE and industriAll Europe held the kick-off meeting of their new social dialogue project ’Towards Zero Adverse Impact of the European Leather Industry – GREEN DEAL LEATHER’.

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.

Against this EU policy background, the leather sector’s social partners, COTANCE and industriAll Europe, agree 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 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 initiative, implemented in 7 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 in 2024, will conclude the project, with a presentation of the results.

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