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Press conference given yesterday by Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Commissioner Sinkevičius on a package of proposals on soil, waste and deforestation.

"Check against delivery"

Executive Vice-President Timmermans

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our College read-out.

The College adopted a package of measures and actions on soil, deforestation and waste shipments, delivering on our Green Deal.

We will get into the details in a minute.

The College also discussed a Communication on the review of competition policy, ensuring it is fit for new challenges.

Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager will present this in a press conference tomorrow.

Then, under ‘Any Other Business', the President, the HR/VP and myself debriefed on the various summits we attended, including the G20, the COP26, the President's meeting with President Biden, and the Foreign Affairs Council.

Vice-President Schinas also debriefed us on his visits to the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Iraq.

Furthermore, Commissioner Kyriakides gave us an update on the latest epidemiological developments in the EU.

Lastly, Commissioner Hahn informed us about the agreement on the 2022 annual budget.

And now let me move to our main subject of the day. Today, we adopted three further initiatives under the European Green Deal.

• A regulation to finally curb global deforestation and forest degradation as a result of EU demand for agricultural commodities. This was very strongly wished by our citizens.
• A revised regulation to govern waste shipments both inside the EU and towards third countries.
• A strategy to improve the health of our soils, enable sustainable soil use, and provide the necessary legal protection of soil.

Just a few days after concluding COP26, I believe these initiatives show that the European Union is serious about the green transition and just keeps moving forward with it.

In Glasgow, I ended my final intervention on behalf of the EU by saying ‘it doesn't stop here, it's only at best a start'.

And that's true. This is at best the end of the beginning. And we have a tremendous amount of work to do.

The actions we take now follow through on our ambitions and - that's what really counts - concrete action. To succeed in the global fight against the climate and biodiversity crises, we must take responsibility at home as well as in our international relations.

The proposals we present to you today do exactly that.

Our deforestation regulation answers citizens' call to minimize the European contribution to deforestation and to promote sustainable consumption. Between 1990 and last year, we've lost 420 million hectares of forest – that's an area larger than the European Union.

EU demand for commodities like palm oil, soy, wood, beef, cocoa, and coffee are strong drivers of deforestation. More and more citizens want us to put an end to this. Our proposal therefore creates a strong due diligence system. It ensures that we only import these products if we can ascertain that they are deforestation-free and produced legally.    

Our new rules for waste shipments will boost the circular economy and ensure that the EU's waste stops polluting third countries. You know, it's about time that we learn that trash is cash, rather than a problem. We propose much stricter rules on the export to non-OECD countries, as well as closer monitoring of export to OECD countries.

All EU companies exporting waste outside the EU should ensure that the facilities receiving their waste, manage it in an environmentally sound manner.

Within the EU, we want to simplify procedures for certain shipments for recycling. So, landfill and burning has to be made more difficult and recycling has to be made easier.

This will help create markets of scale for recycled materials and turn waste into a valuable resource.

Our third proposal under the Green Deal is the soil strategy. We depend on soil for most of our food and yet, 70% of soil is not in a good shape. Getting soils healthy is simply a matter of our own survival.

The strategy sets a number of ambitious and necessary objectives to heal our soils, such as the reduction of soil pollution to non-harmful levels by 2050. In essence, that is what climate neutrality means, beyond carbon neutrality it also means that your environment has to be in a healthy and good shape.

I believe this is the only way that we can teach ourselves to learn to live within planetary boundaries and still have high levels of development and have peaceful relations with our environment. While allowing for the rest of the world, that is aspiring to reach our levels of development, to also get there.

Click here for the full press release