Start date: | 09/12/2019 |
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End date: | 09/12/2019 |
Where: | Representation of North Rhine-Westfalia to the European Union |
With the intention to introduce a European Green Deal within her first hundred days in office, European Commission President-Elect Ursula von der Leyen has placed addressing climate change at the forefront of the EU’s upcoming political agenda.
For Europe to meet its ambitious objective to become the world’s first carbon-neutral continent and reduce CO2 emission by at least 50 per cent by 2030, the EU will have to establish a policy and regulatory environment that encourages the creation and innovation of new technologies critical to meeting this important challenge.
Although progress has been made in this regard over the last few years – through for example the sustained emphasis on the circular economy, or, more broadly, the introduction of the Better Regulation Guidelines – still more can and should be done to harness the EU’s capacity to innovate and embrace the future.
As bottom-up social movements are cropping up around the world, our political systems are facing one of the biggest challenges of our modern time: combatting climate change and finding a new vision and economic model that can unite us.