UEAPME

Sustainable Consumption and Production

The renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy has identified promotion of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) as one of the key sustainability challenges.

A public consultation was launched on the basis of a background document and a questionnaire. UEAPME responded to the on-line consultation in September 2007, attended two Stakeholder meetings organised respectively by DG ENTR and DG ENV and the “Time for Action” conference in Ljubljana, which was also part of the consultation process.

Crafts and SMEs in Europe understand the main ideas of SCP, but ask all institutions at European and national level to take into account more carefully the needs of SMEs (currently, most SMEs do not have any environmental policy in place and do not work with instruments such as Life Cycle Analysis/Approach) and the challenges SMEs will have to face when the existing policies will be strengthened and new instruments will be adopted to achieve the objectives of SCP. The Position paper below is a preliminary analysis of expected impacts that some of the potential new instruments might have on European SMEs.

Position Papers