EU Geographical indications registers
https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/geographical-indications-and-quality-schemes_en
Quality labels protect and promote the origins, traditions and unique characteristics of many distinctive EU products.

Open letter: Support for the geolocation requirement in the draft EU regulation on deforestation fr
https://ongidef.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Lettre-aux-membres-du-conseil-et-du-parlement-europeen_Finale.pdf
We are a group of 30 Ivorian civil society organisations and 35 Ivorian farmers’ organisations representing more than 34,700 cocoa smallholders. With this letter, we would like to share with you our position on the draft European regulation on imported deforestation and in particular our full support for the geolocation requirement that it proposes and which would bring us many benefits.

We are committed to the development of a sustainable and fair agricultural supply chain. Since January 2021 and the launch of the policy dialogue between Côte d'Ivoire and the European Union on sustainable cocoa, we have been closely following the discussions and participating when invited. ...

Because, beyond identifying the origin of the cocoa, traceability is not only about tackling deforestation. It is also about social equity and an opportunity to put in place mechanisms that allow producers, the first actors in the supply chain, to make a decent living from their work. Traceability is a unique opportunity for producers to access a digitalized system that will reduce the complexity of the supply chain and ensure an improvement of their living conditions.

...

It is precisely the complexity of this supply chain that prompts us to reiterate the inclusion of a clear traceability requirement in the European regulation. We want to seize this opportunity to clean up the cocoa sector in our country. The actors in the timber sector seem to be succeeding thanks to the FLEGT VPA process and we want to draw inspiration from this experience.

For our members, small farmers, the implementation of a geolocation requirement will have many other benefits:

1. Geolocation is a necessary pre-requisite for the implementation of electronic payments to producers: a key issue for us and one that we have expressed to the Ivorian authorities.Our Ministry of Agriculture, through the Coffee and Cocoa Council, is currently working to put such payments in place via the national traceability system. The introduction of electronic payments will make payments secure and ensure a credible and sustainable source of supply. This will effectively combat the fraud that our members often fall victim to. The establishment of electronic payments may even one day allow farmers to receive payments for environmental services.

2. The geo-location of plots and producers makes it possible to clean up the farmer cooperative system insofar as each producer, thanks to a unique identifier, can only belong to one cooperative. And those who do not respect t

Article; Gemopper over nieuwe EU-regels tegen ontbossing
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/09/21/gemopper-over-nieuwe-eu-regels-tegen-ontbossing-a4866640
Contains insights into the actual roll-out of this new legislation
article due_dilligence eu nrc | permalink | 2024-09-24 09:55:47

EU Farm to Fork Strategy
https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en


Food systems cannot be resilient to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic if they are not sustainable. We need to redesign our food systems which today account for nearly one-third of global GHG emissions, consume large amounts of natural resources, result in biodiversity loss and negative health impacts (due to both under- and over-nutrition) and do not allow fair economic returns and livelihoods for all actors, in particular for primary producers.

Putting our food systems on a sustainable path also brings new opportunities for operators in the food value chain. New technologies and scientific discoveries, combined with increasing public awareness and demand for sustainable food, will benefit all stakeholders.

The Farm to Fork Strategy aims to accelerate our transition to a sustainable food system that should:
have a neutral or positive environmental impact

help to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts

reverse the loss of biodiversity

ensure food security, nutrition and public health, making sure that everyone has access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, sustainable food

preserve affordability of food while generating fairer economic returns, fostering competitiveness of the EU supply sector and promoting fair trade

eu farming food policy | permalink | 2024-05-23 10:44:12

What is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)?
https://www.ibm.com/topics/csrd
The goal of the CSRD is to provide transparency that will help investors, analysts, consumers, and other stakeholders better evaluate EU companies’ sustainability performance as well as the related business impacts and risks. Introduced as part of the European Commission’s Sustainable Finance Package, the CSRD notably expands the scope, sustainability disclosures and reporting requirements of its predecessor, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD).

CSRD reporting is based on the concept of double materiality: Organizations have to disclose information on how their business activities affect the planet and its people, and how their sustainability goals, measures and risks impact the financial health of the business. For example, in addition to requiring an organization to report its energy usage and costs, CSRD requires them to report emissions metrics that detail how that energy use impacts the environment, targets for reducing that impact, and information on how achieving those targets will affect the organization’s finances.
CSRD eu regulation | permalink | 2024-02-28 14:41:55

Common Framework for Responsible Purchasing Practices (cfrpp)
https://www.cfrpp.org/
Building resilience in supply chains through responsible purchasing practices Responsible purchasing practices are essential to achieve the improvements in factory working conditions that many brands and retailers have publicly committed to. Improved purchasing practices will contribute to preventing harm and facilitating both social and environmental improvements in the supply chain.

Promoting human rights and environmental due diligence in global supply chains
https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/122202.html
The project enables buyers and manufacturers, particularly in the textile and electronics industry, to live up to their joint responsibility to people and the environment. An integrated fund focuses on promoting projects with EU member states, development partners, the private sector and civil society.

CIRPASS; Digital Product Passport
https://cirpassproject.eu


A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a structured collection of product related data with pre- defined scope and agreed data ownership and access rights conveyed through a unique identifier and that is accessible via electronic means through a data carrier. The intended scope of the DPP is information related to sustainability, circularity, value retention for re- use, remanufacturing, and recycling.

The DPP’s goals are: (1) enhancing sustainable production; (2) extending product lifetimes, optimising product use, and providing new business opportunities to economic actors through circular value retention and extraction; (3) supporting consumers in making sustainable choices; (4) enabling the transition to the circular economy by boosting materials and energy efficiency; and (5) supporting authorities to verify compliance. (European Commission).
cirpass dpp eu traceability | permalink | 2023-04-25 16:04:32

Article: Is Europe failing on import diversification?
https://www.bruegel.org/blog-post/europe-failing-import-diversification
In the discussion on European Union strategic sovereignty – the idea that the EU should not be dependent on other economies – there are broadly two approaches. The first is that a certain degree of self-sufficiency (autarky) is needed, at least in ‘strategic’ industries. The second is that strategic sovereignty can be achieved by ensuring that strategically important imports from one country can be substituted by imports from another – in other words, through sufficient import diversification. But to what extent are Europe’s imports already diversified, and how has diversification developed over time?

Data Ports
https://dataports-project.eu/


The main goal of the DataPorts project is to comprehensively address non-covered aspects of data platforms, with a specific application to transportation logistics in port environments in order to achieve cognitive PCS and improve data management between involved stakeholders.

DataPorts aims to design, develop, set-up and operate a data platform for the trusted, secure and reliable data sharing and trading among the actors operating in the diverse supply chains involved in the seaports, also enabling the connection with other stakeholders in the logistics supply chain. The adoption and use of this Data Platform by existing connected / digital ports will imply their transition to actual cognitive ports, taking real advantage of the huge amount of data produced by the stakeholders and opening the way to new capabilities:

- Real-time control of operations
- Streamlined decision making
- Accurate prediction of future events and situations
- Prescriptive analytics.


EU Policy on Critical Raw Materials (CRM)
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/raw-materials/areas-specific-interest/critical-raw-materials_en
Raw materials are crucial to Europe’s economy. They form a strong industrial base, producing a broad range of goods and applications used in everyday life and modern technologies. Reliable and unhindered access to certain raw materials is a growing concern within the EU and across the globe. To address this challenge, the European Commission has created a list of critical raw materials (CRMs) for the EU, which is subject to a regular review and update. CRMs combine raw materials of high importance to the EU economy and of high risk associated with their supply.
commodities crm eu law legal | permalink | 2022-09-14 14:45:59

DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0071&from=EN


The behaviour of companies across all sectors of the economy is key to succeed in the Union’s transition to a climate-neutral and green economy in line with the European Green Deal and in delivering on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including on its human rights- and environment-related objectives. This requires implementing comprehensive mitigation processes for adverse human rights and environmental impacts in their value chains, integrating sustainability into corporate governance and management systems, and framing business decisions in terms of human rights, climate and environmental impact, as well as in terms of the company’s resilience in the longer term.

EU companies operate in complex surroundings and, especially large ones, rely on global value chains. Given the significant number of their suppliers in the Union and in third countries and the overall complexity of value chains, EU companies, including the large ones, may encounter difficulties to identify and mitigate risks in their value chains linked to respect of human rights or environmental impacts. Identifying these adverse impacts in value chains will become easier if more companies exercise due diligence and thus more data is available on human rights and environmental adverse impacts.

A pocket guide to the EU’s new fish and aquaculture consumer labels
https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2014/december/tradoc_152941.pdf


Within the EU fish comes with basic traceability requirements. This pocket guide will explain what must appear on the new labels and what additional information can be displayed.
asc display eu msc pdf seafood traceability | permalink | 2022-07-10 13:41:55

Visualization of Raw Material Supply Chains using the EU Criticality Datasets
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC111646/20180525_jrc-tech-rep-supply_chain_viewer_final.pdf


This study uses the existing datasets from the 2017 EU criticality assessment to visualize 74 material supply chains and shows interconnections between them. Firstly, the data sets are rearranged into a simple graph with nodes representing the countries, materials, product applications, and sectors involved in materials supply and use. The weighted edges (links) represent relationships between them, i.e., the production of materials by countries and the flow of materials into product applications and subsequent economic sectors. Secondly, because mapping the critical raw materials data considers the links between countries, materials, product applications, and sectors, the resulting graphs can also be analysed using network statistics (based on their connectivity). For this, degree centrality (a count of the number of incoming or outgoing links of a node) is used to highlight more interconnected nodes (key actors) in the supply and use of materials. This allows, e.g., detection of countries providing a large number of different (raw) materials, materials finding widespread downstream uses, or product applications relying on a large number of materials.