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BusinessEurope Headlines No. 2023-14

EU-Brazil: strengthening mutually beneficial relationship  

“European business strongly supports the EU-Mercosur agreement. From an economic point of view, this is the most important agreement ever negotiated by the EU, both in terms of market size and trade liberalisation that it would realise”, said BusinessEurope Director General Markus J. Beyrer in a meeting with Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, Ambassador of Brazil to the EU on 24 April. Beyond the EU-Mercosur agreement, which BusinessEurope would like to see concluded and ratified as soon as possible, the EU-CELAC summit in July will also offer an opportunity to discuss the broader bilateral relationship. “Europe has traditionally been one of the biggest sources of foreign direct investment into Brazil. European companies are looking for investment opportunities and could support Brazil as it seeks to strengthen its industrial base”, said Beyrer.

Contact: Eleonora Catella

Securing a sustainable and resilient supply of raw materials

“The recent proposal on Critical Raw Materials (CRMA) is a good start, but further improvements are needed to make it workable for businesses. It is now key that co-legislators make more steps on several fronts to ensure that the CRM Act makes the EU a stronger commodity player”, said Alexandre Affre, BusinessEurope Deputy Director General, at seminar on “How to secure a sustainable and resilient supply of raw materials for the EU”, organised at Permanent Representation of Sweden to the EU on 27 April.

Today, Europe is overly dependent on single suppliers for many critical raw materials that are essential for the green and digital transformation of European industries. The CRMA needs to provide concrete answers for both diversifying our external supplies and increasing our own extractive, processing and recycling capacities. Implementing the goals takes time and this makes it all the more important not to overburden companies and to keep new information and disclosure requirements by companies to an absolute minimum and avoid duplication of requests. Trade and business secrets must be fully protected.  

Affre highlighted that the proposed measures on permit-granting process have potential to accelerate the deployment of projects in Europe, but the procedures must run faster and, without compromising quality over speed, it is also important to accelerate the process of environmental impact assessments. “The EU should ensure that the environmental footprint declaration does not create a negative impact on trade and the security of supply. Because of its direct impact, industry must be closely involved in the implementation of the CRM Act”, he concluded.

The seminar featured the participation of the State Secretary to the Swedish Minister for Energy, Business and Industry, Ebba Busch, Members of the European Parliament, the European Commission and several CEOs and high-level representatives from large companies, the Swedish Mining Association and other European associations.

Contact: Daniele Olivieri

EU Talent Pool can play key role in reducing labour and skills shortages  

With a rapidly ageing workforce, the EU is likely to experience strong labour shortages for a long period. This comes on top of present labour and skills shortages that have become more striking since COVID and that highlighted structural skills mismatches. Economic migration, in particular the ongoing work to make a legislative proposal for an EU Talent Pool, can play a complementary role in helping to addresses these shortages over the years ahead. This was among the key messages given by Maxime Cerutti, BusinessEurope Director of Social Affairs, in a discussion on the EU Talent Pool that took place in the European Parliament on 25 April. BusinessEurope considers that in its inception phase, the Talent Pool should focus on addressing shortages on the basis of national shortage occupation lists. In parallel, the Talent Pool should seek to facilitate the process of labour market tests, in cases where these are conducted.

Contact: Robert Plummer

EU-India Trade & Technology Council: BusinessEurope’s priorities

BusinessEurope published yesterday its priorities for the EU-India Trade and Technology Council (TTC) on trade, investment and supply chains. They include regulatory cooperation, subsides, reform of the World Trade Organisation, investment, and cooperation on economic security, including supply chain resilience. Our paper also states that the ongoing negotiations on the EU-India free trade agreement and on the TTC should remain separate processes. The priorities to be discussed under the TTC constitute a preliminary list, which will have to be reassessed and adjusted in light of the outcomes of the bilateral trade and investment negotiations. BusinessEurope hopes that most issues, especially related to trade, investment and supply chains will be covered through the negotiations. Otherwise, some of those matters could then be treated in the TTC. On the occasion of this paper launch, BusinessEurope organised an event with Dora Correia, Director at the European Commission Directorate General for Trade, on 27 April to discuss BusinessEurope’s priorities as well as the process of the TTC. The TTC working groups will do the preparatory groundwork ahead of the EU-India TTC Ministerial meeting that will be co-chaired by Executive Vice Presidents Dombrovskis and Vestager and their Indian counterparts in mid-May in Brussels.

Contact: Elena Suárez

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Last updated: 28 April 2023