Joana Arreguy participates to the EU Clean Transition Dialogue on industry with EC President and Executive Vice-President

Today, Glass for Europe’s Chairwoman Joana Arreguy from Saint-Gobain took part in the Clean Transition Dialogue on Energy Intensive Industries. This meeting was the second of a series of high-level dialogues launched by EC President Von der Leyen. Glass for Europe thanks the European Commission President for involving the glass industry in this dialogue and our Chairwoman Joana Arreguy for taking an active part inthe discussion.

In her opening statement, President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the importance of industry in Europe’s economy and acknowledged that that circumstances industry faces are ‘incredibly challenging’, partly due to stronger international competition.

These words served as a perfect introduction to Joana Arreguy’s various interventions and to her introductory speech on the importance of safeguarding existing manufacturing capacity in Europe and creating the conditions for building new ones. Among other items, Joana Arreguy stressed the need to support the electrification and decarbonization efforts of the glass sector including through targeted measures such as indirect cost compensation for the glass sector and more EU funds channeled to glass decarbonization projects. She also emphasized the necessity to de-risk industrial projects, for example by lifting regulatory uncertainties on the carbon market post 2035 and those generated by the introduction of the carbon border adjustment mechanism. The need to promote the market uptake of lower carbon and EU-made products was also highlighted. In this respect, the necessity to adopt rapidly an ambitious recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, was underlined by Joana Arreguy.

Glass for Europe hopes to build on this high-level dialoque to continue the discussion with Executive Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič and relevant EC services to keep on developing a more robust industrial policy that supports Europe’s industry competitiveness as an instrument to achieving the EU Green Deal agenda and the 2050 climate-neutrality objective.