 All right, welcome each and one of you to the European Parliament. My name is Pär Hongen. I'm one of the two hosts this afternoon, or lunchtime, or whatever it is, morning. I'm a member of the Swedish Greens, MEP in the Environmental Committee and also the Agri Committee. And as you all probably are aware of this session, these two and a half hours, or maybe a bit more, is organized by the Stockholm Environment Institute, whom I had the pleasure to cooperate with during many different occasions during the last 10 years or whatever. And also, of course, the Institute for European Environmental Policy. And my co-host is Sara Matthew. I know that you need to leave a bit early, but I will be staying for the whole session. So once again, each and one of you, very, very welcome to the European Parliament. Hi, everyone, also from my side. It's really wonderful to see all of you here in the Parliament, and indeed I apologize. I won't be able to stay very long, but I'm happy to do some opening words on this very important topic. And it's great to see that EEP and the Stockholm Environment Institute are actually working on the topic. I think in the political area, most of the attention right now goes to tackling the climate ambitions, generated within national borders, of course. And well, that's not a surprise, because, well, relatively speaking, it's easier to monitor those emissions and to create then policy measures to reduce them. But I think that we will hear from the other speakers today that that actually hides a large part of the problem. And well, maybe to explain the political significance of that, I'll give you an example from my backyard from Belgium. We have a huge discussion going on in Flanders on the port of Antwerp. This is an area that hosts one of the largest chemistry clusters in Europe. And well, a few years ago, the industry giant Eneos, they decided there to build a new production plant to create feedstocks for the plastic sector. And well, the company actually wants to do that by shipping ethane from the United States. And well, this ethane is essentially produced by fracking gas and rock formations. I'm sure you're all aware of that. Well, you probably also know that there's more and more evidence that fracking and the leaking gas transport infrastructure actually needs to enormous emissions. In fact, in some cases, they even emit more than coal. And the thing is, of course, that those emissions don't actually appear in the overview of the Belgian emissions. And that's why a lot of policymakers don't really care or are not aware of that fact. But I think that there's an extra dimension to this. And that is that, well, Eneos is fracking to create additional supply for the plastics industry when we know that actually there's a global oversupply already. And well, that means that this kind of investment in Antwerp and of course also in other places is actually depressing the prices of virgin plastics even more and that they will become much more attractive than the recycled feedstocks. And I think that's bad news because, well, that comes at a time where recyclers are already facing problems in remaining competitive with the producers of virgin plastics. And that matters a lot, of course, because, well, recycled plastics, reused materials, as you know, they will emit far fewer emissions than the virgin ones. And so, well, these new production facilities by Antwerp, by Eneos and Antwerp, they will aggravate our problem because, well, they are continuing, of course, to rely on fossil value chains. And they give the oil and the gas sector a new lease on life. And of course, they're also boosting the overproduction and undermining the circular economy and the demand reduction. And I think that the problem in this particular case is that the policymakers are actually boosting and supporting such investments without actually seeing that bigger picture. So what happens is that they will require the installation to do carbon capture and storage, often something way in the future, of course, we don't really have guarantees that it will happen. But, well, when you look at the emissions upstream, we know that nothing will happen because, well, right now there are too little incentives for policymakers and for businesses to look at the consumption based footprints. Whether it's in terms of emissions or in terms of the material footprint. And well, just to briefly say, I know that that is not the topic of today. But I do want to highlight how important that material footprint is because it's a very good proxy for the climate emissions by using fewer materials. We need, of course, less production, less energy use, and that will lead to fewer climate emissions. So I think it's clear that we need more incentives towards the outsourcing of our emissions to the third countries as we bring down our own domestic emissions. And well, I think it's problematic because already today, as you all know, our consumption footprint is higher than people elsewhere in the world. And well, I think that there's essentially two avenues that we can take as policymakers where we should invest more. One is more trades related and the other one is related to the demand reduction in the EU. And well, I think in my opinion, there is some good news. Well, at least let's clarify that good news with with some examples that I had the opportunity to work on in the recent years here in European Parliament. First trades. I'm a member of the trades committee. As you know, we have the carbon border adjustment mechanism now in place in the next few years to come to actually ensure that the producers of cement of steel and so on. In third countries also will pay for their climate pollution. And I think that that's an effective way to stop handing out the free pollution permits in the EU, of course. And that will help us bring down the domestic emissions. But I think that it's also a major breakthrough to reduce the outsourcing of our industrial production that we then re-import. And the system will allow us, of course, also to better monitor those emissions embedded in the imported goods, because well, foreign producers will be incentivized to provide that accurate information about the emissions of their production methods. Now, as a political group, as greens, we've been asking for that for the past 20 years or so. And well, finally, we have it. So that's good news. At the same time, of course, we wanted to include more sectors. We wanted to expand the scope to also the intermediate products to make it a much more effective law. We didn't get that, unfortunately, but I think politically speaking, we have achieved a major step forward. And well, I think that there's a major lesson to be learned, and that is to understand how actually to convince the stakeholders and other political groups that we have an interest in such measures. Because well, with CBAM, it were really the big sectors like the steel industry, for instance, that really saw the sign on the wall. They opened the door to support it because they knew that they needed an alternative for the existing system of those free allowances. And well, that system would become obsolete, of course, as emissions in the EU decline in the coming years, and the sector is actually facing a lot of competition due to, amongst other things, the higher energy prices. So creating that level playing fields with CBAM was also in their geostrategic and an economical interest. So it's clear, sadly, we need more than just the environmental perspective and the moral arguments. But then let's also talk demand reduction. Well, I would like to highlight in that effect the new eco design legislation. It's another, I think, very relevant topic that I was fortunate enough to negotiate on in this parliament. So from around 2025, roughly speaking, it's not 100% clear, it will depend, of course, on the commission when they will come up with their delegated act. We will see a major flurry of circular design criteria for products like textiles, like furniture, but also steel, chemicals, and so on. And so depending on the product, they will become more reusable, more recyclable, more repairable, and the carbon and environmental footprint also will become a requirement. And that will apply to all products, both from third countries, both domestic as well. And again, it will create that level playing fields. But it will also decrease the demand for products because of course they will be more robust, they will last longer. And I think that that is really going to make a huge impact. I'm quite sure of that. But what is missing right now? Well, we have the requirements we need, they are all there. So there is a direction of travel, but there's no real goal on the horizon. I mean, the law doesn't really state an ambition as we have it, for instance, of course, in our climate ambitions. We know where we want to end up in 2050. And well, I think that that matters a lot because, well, the commission and its next mandate, of course, will develop how ambitious the eco design rules should be. And I think it's problematic because that's really a political issue. So far, we don't really have any consumption based objectives like we have that for the domestic emissions. So let me conclude by saying that, well, the next circular economy action plan or the EU at large, I think, should really include such objectives. I think many countries and regions like the Netherlands, Flanders, Austria actually have a material footprint target. I think that the EU should have them too. And well, I hope that the event and the result, of course, of the very important work that you are doing here can really contribute to that. Thank you very, very much, Sarah. And I hope you can stay for a short while at least. And now I think it's Timothy who will be in charge for the rest more or less. Thank you very much. And let me first of all ask everyone to give a round of applause to our two co-hosts. It's fantastic to see a full room here today to discuss this exciting topic. My name is Tim Siliada. I'm a senior fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute. I'm also a researcher who was involved in the project that sits behind the event today. It's funded by the European Climate Foundation. So what I'd like to do is run us through the agenda for today. As I say that we have started the recording and this will be published online afterwards. So you're aware during the call, during the discussion today, we can have some tweets going out on X. So please engage as you go along. So we've just about, I'm about to give a short scene setter that just introduces the topics for today a little bit more. We've heard a great introduction already that provides some really concrete examples of where we're going to discuss this important topic of consumption based emissions. And looking to try and address this question of how can the EU become a leader in consumption based emissions reduction. So surely I'll introduce three speakers to bring us the European Union perspective. So we're lucky to have representatives from DG environment, from Joint Research Center and from the European Environment Agency. And then we'll turn to look at the member states perspective and we have speakers from Sweden, Denmark and France. And following that we'll have a chance for everyone to have been involved in an open discussion. And please save your questions and reflections for that session and we'll have a really good open discussion, I hope. At the end, we'll be asking to conclude with some remarks to start the day. So I'll just move to setting the scene. So to look at the global emissions trajectory over the period 1990 to 2022. You can see that there has been an increase of 63% over that period of time. And these emissions don't include land use. Just so you know, the EU 27 member states has seen over the same period decline around 29%. But this only tells part of the story. As we've heard, there's the emissions that are embodied in trade are not actually included in this picture. Here you have a chart that shows those emissions that are embodied in trade. And the red countries and you'll see most of the EU member states are included in that category have net our net importers of greenhouse gas emissions. So that means that the emissions associated with their imports are higher than the emissions associated with their exports. So if you would cast your mind back to the previous slide, the emissions that you see there do not include that net import. So the ones that the EU is actually responsible for are higher than what we saw in the territorial and the emissions. So the project that we at the Stockholm Environment Institute have been initiating with partners is the aim of it is to try to bring consumption based emissions further on to the European agenda. Share some experiences of where there has been some approaches already adopted in the EU and also in member states. And to understand some of the hotspots, the consumption areas, but also the countries where the imports to the EU are coming and to use this information to identify gaps and looking at policies, strategy, monitoring targets there. The focus really is on greenhouse gas emissions. But as MEP much you mentioned, there is also other environmental pressures that are caused by our consumption. For example, water use and biodiversity pressures, which we don't cover in this project, but they're also very important aspects that I think will come up as we go through the presentations of today. So we're in the early stages of this project. As you can see, January 2024 is the roundtable of today. We've gone through a process of interviews with experts, both in member states and the EU, and we'll be coming forward with reports and findings from that. But this event today is really important to gather additional perspectives and share some lessons that we know from our own experiences. So we're really looking forward to incorporating that as we go forward in the project. So that concludes this introductory setting the scene presentation. The next presentations will be from the EU perspective. And I'd first of all like to invite Barbara Bacigalupi to give us a perspective from DG environment. Thank you. First of all, I wanted to say that it's a great pleasure to be here today to talk to you about the need to address the consumption-based emissions. I would like to thank Paare Olmgren and Sarah Mathieu for hosting the event, but also the organizer, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Institute for Environmental European Policy. In view of answering the questions why consumption-based emissions matter, I would like to first present shortly the policy context of the EU policy, some EU initiatives showing clearly the interest of addressing consumption-based. And I will provide you some examples about how the Commission is using footprint indicators to address spillovers in monitoring progress. The European Green Deal is recognizing the big role of addressing climate and environmental objectives in the EU and globally. The environmental action program emphasizes the role of addressing consumption-based policies. The circular economy action plan also includes clear references to decreasing material and consumption footprint and is one of the key elements of the European Green Deal. And in relation to SDGs, the EU is quite committed to deliver SDGs and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the EU and helping the external dimension, so helping other countries to deliver. The European Green Deal is the first Commission priority and it aims at ensuring sustainable growth, climate neutrality and the resource-efficient Europe. It builds on a series of environmental policies and of sectoral policies which helps achieving the systemic changes that is so fundamental to achieving the European Green Deal ambitions. At global resource, at global level, this was already said, resource extraction and processing are responsible for more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is clear that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing primary material use are the two sides of the same coin. We cannot achieve one if we do not achieve the other objective. And in achieving the European Green Deal, the EU needs to act as a global leader because global challenges of the triple planetary crisis require a global response. One of the pillars of the European Green Deal is to ensure that the EU acts as a global leader, in particular with diplomacy, with trade policy, with development support and other policies including international agreements like the conference of parties on climate change, the one on biodiversity and the one on desertification. The eight-environment election programme is one important tool to ensure a good governance of the European Green Deal within the Discommissioned date, but also beyond. Why? Because the ATP has a longer term vision to achieve the six priority objectives by 2030 with a 2050 vision of living well within the planetary boundaries. While the ATP has similar objectives of the European Green Deal, it is a decision. So it is a formal act that commits not only the Commission, but it commits the European Parliament, the Council, all Member States, the European Social and Economic Committee and the Committee of the Regions. One of the objectives of the ATP is to significantly decrease the union material and consumption footprint to bring them into the planetary boundaries as soon as possible. In addition, it also recognises as an enabler of the achievement the global uptake of the priority objectives, supporting by ensuring currents between internal and external approaches, in particular by fostering sustainable corporate governance, including establishing mandatory due diligence requirements at union level, and promoting the uptake of responsible business conduct in union external policies, including trade policy. The circular economy action plan emphasises again this objective of reducing material footprint. The circular economy aims to keep the value of materials in the economy, and in this way it allows to decrease pressures on primary resource use. The aspirational objective of the circular economy is to keep you resource consumption within the planetary boundaries and therefore strive to reduce its consumption footprint. This is an aspirational objective because the circular economy action plan is a communication and it has not been formally adopted by council and parliament. And again, in the context of the sustainable development goals, these are at the core of the EU policy. Leave no one behind is really very close and it's clearly embedded in the SDGs and in the European Green Deal. And more recently, in 2023, the EU adopted the first SDG voluntary review, where the EU Commission presents the efforts to reduce, to achieve SDGs both at internal, both at external, both boosting the external dimension. So, helping other countries to achieving SDGs. Now, let me just give you a few examples of the key, some key initiatives which address environmental spillovers, the new carbon border adjustment mechanism. This has been already mentioned as one of the key examples to embed sustainability in the products that are used in the internal market. In October 2023, the transitional phase has started. That means that now we certain goods needs to compile, comply with this mechanism. In particular, the first sectors include products like cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilizers, electricity and hydrogen. Another important initiative is the regulation on deforestation, which was adopted in 2023 and came into force in June. And with this regulation, we aim to guarantee that the products EU citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation on forest degradation worldwide. And finally, last but not least, the eco design for sustainable product regulation, which will allow to shift towards a truly sustainable products which are made in view that they last longer, they use energy and resources more efficiently. They are easier to repair and recycle. They contain fewer substances of concern and include more recycled content. But I would also like to stress that beyond environment and climate impacts, the over-exploitation of natural resources do also have an impact on human rights, peace and security. Under this corporate social responsibility, the commission adopted the key proposals to address also social spillovers. And here I mentioned just a few of these initiatives, the directive on corporate sustainability due diligence, the regulation on prohibiting products made with forced labour on the union market and the revised regulation on conflict mineral arts. These initiatives are particularly important. In particular, the last one is crucial to ensure that the extraction of critical raw materials for which the digital transition depends are extracted in a way that they do not undermine social objectives in other countries. Now, let me go to the last part of the presentation. I would like to present you briefly some footprint indicators that have been developed by the European Commission. What is a footprint? First of all, a footprint indicator is an indicator which embeds a consumption perspective vision. That means that it considers the impact of U consumption. That means that it also takes into account the impact coming from imported goods from abroad. This is a nutshell of the footprint indicator that have been produced by the commission. The material footprint has a special focus on materials and it considers the amount of materials needed for U consumption and it is produced by Eurostat. The consumption footprint estimates the environmental impacts of U consumption and it is produced by the joint research centre and Esther will tell you more about this. The carbon footprint which is produced by Eurostat and which estimates the carbon dioxide emissions that occur throughout the global chain of products that arrives in the respective country. And the land footprint which has been developed jointly by Eurostat and the joint research centre and which refers to the amount of land directly and indirectly needed to fulfill the consumption of a country. All these indicators are produced by the commission and some of them are used for policy monitoring. Overall, as you can see from the slide, many of these indicators are used. Some are used specifically for monitoring progress on the eight environmental action programme, on the circular economy, on SDGs and on the resilience dashboard. You will see in the presentation I have kept the hyperlinks so you can get more information about these. Very shortly the material footprint shows a decreasing trend in the EU and in 2022 figures from Eurostat says that in Europe, on average, the EU consumes 14.8 tonnes per capita, which is approximately overall 6.6 billion tonnes for the USA wall. The trend shows two low values, one in 2007-2018 due to the global financial crisis and the other one is in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If we consider your material footprint vis-à-vis the rest of the world, the raw material consumption, the material footprint represents roughly 6.4% of worldwide material extraction. On the consumption footprint we see on the opposite side an increasing trend during 2010 and 2021. Basically during the last 20 years figures show a deterioration so we impact more the planet. In particular, according to the GRC estimates, the EU has clearly transgressed the planetary boundaries for five impacts which are the particulate matter, ecotoxicity in fresh water, climate change, use of fossil-based resources and use of mineral and metal resources. Consumption of food is emerging as one of the main drivers of impacts generated by the average EU citizen. Finally, this is a chart which builds on EuroSat data. It's called the carbon footprint but it only presents CO2-carbon dioxide emissions. So it neglects the other greenhouse gas emissions. The chart clearly presents two indicators, the two indicators on CO2 emissions, the one following the production basis and the other one is on the consumption basis. As you can see, for both indicators the EU has decreased the emissions. Overall, however, the EU consumption caused 3.2 billion tons of global CO2 emissions, which is around 9% of worldwide CO2 emissions, which is more than if we look at the production-based indicator, according to which we have produced 2.8 billion tons of CO2, which represents around 8% of worldwide CO2 emissions. These are the figures for 2020. So these are a few key messages from the indicators that I have just presented. I will not go through because I think we don't have much time, but you have the presentation with you. And final slide shows in a nutshell how the Commission is using material footprint and consumption footprint indicators for monitoring progress towards the different policies. So the ATP, the environment election program, circular economy, SDGs and resilience. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you so much, Vabra. I'd like to now pass to Janes Bakkas to... Not Esther. Esther Sanyam again, meanwhile, yes. Okay. And in any case, these three of us, we talk. So I wanted to reiterate the thank you from the General Research Center to the organizers and the MEPs for this event and for inviting us. I will talk about consumption-based emissions and how they can support EU policies and the work that the General Research Center has been doing. So first, I wanted to highlight the relevance and the importance to have a supply chain perspective. Any product that we consume requires a series of steps, which are the lifecycle of the product. Like you can see here from the design, the extraction of the materials, then the manufacturing transport until we consume them. And at the end of their life, they might go to disposal or to alternative circular economy pathways. In each of these steps, there is a consumption of resources and there are substances and waste emitted to the environment. And some of the part of the supply chain doesn't occur inside the territory of the EU. So the important question here is how we can account for those impacts that we are responsible for as consumers, but that are happening in third countries. So for this purpose at the Jersey, we developed a framework to assess and compare both territorial and consumption impacts. It includes two different indicators. And the first part, we concentrate the efforts in what happens within the EU and what's called the domestic activities of production and consumption. And based on official statistics, one can collect information and assess the impacts to the resource extraction and the emissions. And this is done in the domestic footprint indicator. But as we were commenting, not all what we produce, we consume in the territory domestically, but we need to import from third countries raw materials, intermediary products or final products, as well as part of EU production is exported to third countries. So when we focus on the impacts of consumption, we need to consider these three elements, the production element and the trade balance between imports and exports. And this is what we do in the consumption footprint indicator where we consider these three elements. This indicator is based on life cycle assessment. So it considers the entire supply chain. We assess the 16 impact categories of the environmental footprint, which is the method recommended by the commission for life cycle assessments. And this allows us to assess beyond climate change and be able to identify and potentially prevent tradeoffs that might occur between environmental issues. And as well, it offers as a high granularity for supporting policy development like the analysis of different scenarios. So if we pay attention to the data since 2010, we observe what we have been discussing so far. The domestic footprint shows a continuous decrease. This is the effect of the implementation of environmental policy and it shows an absolute decoupling from the economic growth here shown in terms of gross domestic products. But when we observe the evolution of the consumption footprint, the trend is different. It shows rather a stability or a slight increase. So here the decoupling from the economic growth is only relative. Here we can clearly see this gap that we were commenting, the trade balance and the import impacts are higher than those of the exports. So we are externalizing impacts to third countries. If we evaluate the trend and the coupling of the consumption footprint, we are still showing some relative decoupling, which is something positive, but still we need further efforts. Since if we assess it from an absolute sustainability perspective like Barbara was showing, we can compare the consumption footprint against the planetary boundaries, which are science based limits of the planet. And unfortunately current data shows that we are transgressing many of them. So we need to work further on both domestically and considering also the trade balance. It is important that when we evaluate the consumption footprint, we also go beyond climate change. In here you can see the 16 impact categories of the environmental footprint and how the five areas of consumption included in this indicator contribute to them. And you see that there are some impact categories for which in green food consumption is the major contributed mainly related to aspects of emissions during agricultural practices. For example, while other impact categories, it's the blue here the housing and are related to impact due to the consumption of energy. So it's important to understand that depending how consumption patterns change in the different areas of consumption might have a different effect depending on the impact that we are evaluating. And on this aspect I wanted to show you an example we evaluated different green transitions within the consumption of household appliances and compared to the baseline. The current consumption we can observe here the results of the 16 impact categories and we evaluated a efficiency measures, benefits of circularity like recycling and technological change like improving the impacts of the electricity mix. And all of them showed benefits in all the impact categories. But when we evaluated the behavioral change and increase of the consumption of these appliances, we observed that this would offset in most of the cases the benefits of the other scenarios that we were evaluating and it will show even trade-offs in a specific impact categories as you can see here in orange. The consumption footprint can support policy development in three main areas as Barbara shown it can support monitoring or observing evolution over time, a specific analysis like the decoupling or focusing on the SDGs. We can support policy making identifying the hotspots where the environmental impacts are coming from so where we need to act. And the assessment against the planetary boundaries can also support this type of analysis we can compare domestic and consumption impacts or focus on a specific aspect like biodiversity or the SDGs. And finally, as you saw the example we can test scenarios both regarding behavioral change or consumption pattern change or technological developments like green transitions. We can see a really examples of this type of support as you saw in the virus presentation. The consumption footprints are really included in different monitoring frameworks of the European Green Deal. Regarding hospital identification, we can use this indicator in the impact assessment of policies to understand what the policy scenarios and the goals of the policy should focus on. And the same for testing scenarios we can support impact assessment when preparing policies as well as support outlook exercises for the future like the one for the zero pollution action. And just one of the last points if we move to the national level we do have data in the consumption footprint platform for both the EU and the EU countries and this is accessible and downloadable for any stakeholder. And we recently developed a specific tool to allow the customization of the consumption footprint data. This is a member states consumption footprint tool and member states or SD holders can access access the consumption data that we employ and test alternative values of consumption and recalculate and download also the resulting consumption footprint. And this resulted from a pilot study that we did with Germany where we published a joint study and we did exactly this compare our data from the jersey that it's available from EU wide data sources like Eurostat with alternative national data sources like could be consumer service. And some concluding remarks the consumption footprint is being used in multiple monitoring frameworks of the Commission and the support's coherence across policies. The data that we use are mainly based on official production and consumption statistics regarding the consumption element and we combine it with environmental modeling based on life cycle assessment. And we have observed some challenges we have observed some data quality issues regarding outliers or gaps in these statistics of production and consumption. So for the purpose of making targets and making something mandatory that will require joint efforts between the member states and institutions to improve quality. Some opportunities that we identify are for example the member state tool could be employed to test these alternative data sources that could be employed. And the science based planetary boundaries could support the definition of consumption footprint targets. And finally this model shows certain advantages compared to other options like the alignment with environmental footprint method. So here you have the list of the latest reports. I think it doesn't work with the link to the website of the project and you can access all the material and for one of them I have here some hard copies in case any of you want one. Thank you so much for. Thank you so much. Esther from Joint Research Center. And now, Janis Bakas from the European Department of Agency. Thanks. Thanks a lot also from my part for inviting us here. I will be speaking about the EA perspectives on obviously the same topic using the same evidence space as the previous two speakers or thanks a lot you save me a bit of time to explain the consumption footprint and all that. Waiting for the slides to appear right. Okay while we were waiting maybe I should. I remember the first one so I'll start speaking. And so I thought I'd start by reiterating the difference between territorial and consumption based emissions, especially looking into the policy relevance of each. So the territorial based emissions is if you can imagine a huge net above the EU territory and whatever comes into that net that's the territorial emissions. On the other hand, the consumption based emissions are more or less related to economic terms so the EU consumption. We want to spend our money and we want and with that we create demand for products material services and because we do that processes. In the EU but also elsewhere in the world start to happen so that the demands that we create is fulfilled. These are the consumption based emissions. They are both very relevant for policy making the territorial based emissions are the ones that we can directly control directly. That's the keyword here because we can make targets we can put filters above our the industrial facilities in the in the EU and so on and so forth. The consumption based emissions is the ones that take place outside the EU borders. We can indirectly influence and Barbara thanks a lot for that. You outlined a lot of a few examples on how this can happen in deforestation regulation so on and so forth, but only indirectly. Ah, there you go. That's the slide I've been speaking on I think. Yes. Yes. So both of them are relevant for policymakers and what my point is that you should take into account both side by side if you want to make really good decisions about the environment. You cannot ignore you cannot only focus on the territorial and because you might run the risk that you're outsourcing impacts outside the EU. And so the rest of my presentation will revolve around four key questions. How are we doing when it comes to EU consumption and the environment implications on the environment? Are we doing well? Why is it that we see the developments that we see? I think that's a really key question to reflect on and then of course we have to be constructed. What can we do about this? What can we do about the developments we see? This is again the consumption footprint. It is very similar results to what Esther showed you before. So I will not go into the details of defining that this comes from a little bit of a different methodology than what Esther presented to you. But it's exactly the same. I think key messages you see it's more or less stable slightly 2021 is slightly above 2010. So stability, maybe even a little bit of increase in the EU consumption footprint. And this is the answer to how are we doing? But are we doing well? I think that's a more deep question. So the previous speakers spoke about the long-term ambition of environmentalists to be couple consumption-based impacts from economic growth. So that means you let the economy grow in the EU, but the environmental impacts associated with that decrease with time. And that is the decoupling. The ACAP, as Barbara explained, went even further and said that we need to significantly reduce our consumption footprint. And here you can very clearly see that we are in fact decoupling because the economy. I don't have an Esther show that before. The economy is growing much more than the environmental impacts associated with our consumption. But we're definitely not significantly reducing the consumption footprint. That's also very clear. And then the last point I wanted to make, you cannot see in the graph, but if you look into the numbers behind it, that 53% of the impacts of the consumption-based impacts are happening outside the EU. Let me repeat that. The majority of impacts that we are causing on the environment are happening outside the EU borders. So that probably tells us that there is a very significant part of that is somehow under our responsibility of environmental impacts that's happening outside our direct control in the EU. That's what are we doing well. Also, you can get results like that across the different member states. There's large differences across the different countries. But there is one rule of thumb that the more affluent, the richer one country is, the more the environmental consumption footprint that it has. And that leads me to the next slide where we look into the main drivers. What is it that makes the trends develop of the consumption footprint the way they do? We have done analysis on that at the EA and our conclusions point to two major drivers. They are drivers that are pointing to exactly different directions. One is improvements in production efficiency. So this has to do with things like we are greening the production of products here in the EU, because we're decarbonizing the energy grid, for instance. Or we are making more with less. We are becoming more resource efficient in our production. Or we're just putting some filters to capture PM particles leaving the stacks of the EU industrial facilities. And that obviously is driving consumption footprint down because we become more efficient, more environmental efficient in the way we produce things. Also, elsewhere outside the EU, there are efforts to decarbonize and so on. On the other hand, we're becoming richer. So we have more money. So we have more higher consumption expenditure with time. So we're buying more stuff, more goods, more services, and so on. And therefore we will increase our consumption footprint because we are becoming more affluent. And you can see here, it doesn't matter to look into the different segments, time periods in the graph. But the idea is that we are becoming more affluent and therefore this tilts the development of the consumption footprint upwards. And then the fact that we're becoming more efficient in our production holds it down. And that's why you see more or less a stability in the consumption footprint. What is also a good question that has been hanging around environmentalists for long is that is the production improvements, are the production improvements enough to deliver the significant reduction in the consumption footprint that is called for in the ATP and elsewhere. And in the data that we have so far, maybe in the future, these changes is that it's not really enough so far at least to keep investing in improving our production processes because they cannot deliver this significant reduction so far at least. I've been speaking a lot about trends and if things are going well or not so far in terms of a time period between 2010 and 2021. But I think what's important is regardless of the trends, maybe the consumption footprint increases, some years it decreases, but its absolute value, and Esther explained that well, its absolute value leads to environmental impacts that are transgressing a lot of the planetary boundaries. So that means that regardless of the trends, our consumption based impacts are too high right now. And if we are to live within the planetary boundaries as the ATP calls for the environmental action program, then we need to act now. At DEA we have developed this triptych about actions that we can do to bring our consumption based impacts down around reduce shift and improve. So if reduce has to do with, for instance, using products that live longer, and that is also an objective of the ESPR that is currently discussed. So if we have products that last longer, then we reduce the need to buy to replace them as often as we do today. Shift to less material intensive options, the way we spend our money matters. So if we spend our money as consumers into material intensive products instead of, for instance, going to the movies, then we are generating higher environmental impacts and then improve. I showed in the previous slide that the effect of improving our production networks matters. It is the driver that holds our consumption based impacts to stability so far. So we need to keep on with that because it actually works so we shouldn't neglect that. And that's it for me. I hope I gave you a little bit of food for thought with the presentation. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Janice and everyone for providing the perspective from the European Union and how it looks from a regional perspective. We'll now move to a member state point of view and look at three case study countries that we're covering in this project. I'd like to invite Catherine access on from Stockholm environment Institute to speak to us about Swedish case Catherine as the project leader for the project that sits behind this. So my colleague in the project and the SCI. Thank you, Tim. Yes, so I will give you a brief introduction to Sweden's work to monitor consumption based emissions. Just waiting for the slides. Baby, I can just continue speaking. Yeah. Yeah, so I wanted to. Oh, here we go. Just start. Oops. Sorry. Yeah. So I think here we go. Yeah. So already some 25 years ago in 1999 Sweden adopted the generational goal that says that the overarching goal with Sweden's environmental policy work is to hand over to the next generation a society in which the major environmental problems in Sweden have been solved without causing increased environmental and health problems outside Sweden's borders. So this goal clearly demonstrates Sweden's recognition of the fact that the way we live and consume in Sweden risk having a negative impact on other countries where goods are being produced to satisfy Swedish demands. So despite the ambitions set by the Swedish generational goal Sweden is however still very far from on the right path to meet long term climate targets, which is often referred to about one ton per person by 2050. Something which is clear from from this graph that you see here would show the overall trend with regards to Sweden's consumption based emissions. In the case of Sweden households are responsible for about 60% of Sweden's total consumption based emissions. The public sector for 10 and investments both public and private for the remaining 30%. So from looking at this graph it's quite clear that the current policies and measures are not sufficient to influence the consumption patterns and behaviors and curb the emissions at the pace required. Johanna spoke about 53% being imported in terms of EU on average in the case of Sweden around 60% of Sweden's total consumption based emissions are imported into Sweden. And here you can see the trends since 2008 and how increases as well as decreases are partly influenced by which countries Sweden import from. Statistics Sweden is also monitoring the emission intensities associated with imports from different countries as well as sectors of consumption. I have included four examples here. And it's interesting to note how the emission intensity has improved across the board since 2008, which is very positive to see. This however also suggests that it can be important to be aware about these differences if we want to sort of contribute to mitigate the global emission levels. While of course also recognizing the importance of supporting countries in the transition to cleaner technologies, etc. So Sweden recently undertook a governmental investigation to understand the opportunities for Sweden to establish a consumption based target at the national level. All political parties were in agreement to investigate this. But the proposal was unfortunately shelved with the new government formed in 2022. And to my understanding, only two threads are currently active from this proposal. And that is to analyze the climate benefits associated with Swedish exports and to explore how to establish more stringent climate requirements as part of the public procurement. While slow progress to address consumption based emissions can be noted from the Swedish national level, we note promising initiatives and work at the Swedish local level. From a 2018 survey, we learned that already around 25% of the Swedish municipalities that responded to this survey had a consumption based target of some kind in place. And we also learned that political support was what the respondents said they needed the most in order to be able to further advance the work and then followed by financial support. And I want to conclude by pointing to the tool, the consumption compass, which is able to estimate consumption based emissions down to the postcode level. And it's meant to be used as support for municipalities to tailor policies and measures to address differences and similarities in households consumption patterns. And we are very happy to note that this tool has been quick picked up by quite many municipalities already, and that we have come to understand that many use it in support of their work to address just and sustainable transition to a climate smart society. And this I think sends us a very strong signal that this is something that municipalities consider to be a priority and that they want to contribute to this work. That was all for me on the Swedish case. Thank you. Thank you Katina and we'll turn now to Denmark and online we have Michael Minter who will present from concito and he is online I can see. Very good. And your presentation is. Will you. You should be able to share it yourself if you if you can from there. No. Actually, it looks like we can from here as well. Is that right? Yes. All right. Yeah, and then you have to help me. We can see the slides. Yes, if you could pick up a little bit Michael so that we can make sure we hear you well. Can you hear me? Yes. Good. Well, thanks for the invitation for this event and in this short time I have here I will go ahead and say a few words about concito. We are Denmark's green think tank established in 2008 and we are working on the. Climate transformation mainly of all the economic sectors and our consumption habits and of course with a view of. Other sustainability parameters as well and then conceses program on food and consumption we work on both the production and consumption side of the food system and the transformation of that but we also work. In general with promoting climate friendly and sustainable consumption patterns and lifestyle that's included in our programmatic efforts. So next slide please. Yes, the policy status in Denmark on consumption based emissions is that we got the Danish Climate Act adopted in 2020. Includes a 70% reduction target on the territory and emissions compared to 1990 and an objective of a climate neutral society by 2050 at the latest and that was changed to 2045 in the present government platform. So there's a guiding principle in the Climate Act saying that Danish measures should not simply relocate all the greenhouse gas emissions to outside Denmark's borders. There you address the consumption emissions and that's also a requirement to do an annual climate status with a global report on the international effects of the Danish climate efforts. So that's the climate act in the present government platform. They have a an ambition to look at the export of energy technology and services and the positive global impact of that. They also have ambitions on public procurement, but on the question of the carbon footprint of our consumption, they only have the ambition to examine the consequences of setting a target. So that's a very soft wording there and has not much going on at the national level considering the consumption emissions at the moment. So that's the status. Next slide please. The official data on consumption based emissions in Denmark. This is from this annual global report from the Danish Energy Authority shows that also comparable to the European trend that almost half of our emissions are abroad. And you can also see that the reduction in the global consumption emissions are mainly in Denmark due to the transformation of the energy system, but the global emissions are basically unchanged over time. So we have to deal with that. And this, it was also said before that this is kind of shifting part of the reduction to other countries in the world. And that's in our point of view and consider contradicts with the counting principle of the climate that it much must be ensured that the Danish measures to not simply move the greenhouse gas emissions outside the borders. And that is kind of the case here. Next slide. Yes, this issue of consumption based emissions has been a focus area for consumers since 2010. And we have had a national result of 17 to 19 ton per capita since 2010. And we updated this data and reports last year and this report from August showing that the emissions today is 13 tons per capita. That's a reduction compared to before, but much of this reduction can be explained by methodological changes, but also different measuring of the climate impact of biomass and so on, for instance. So, yeah, the footprint shows you the distribution of the footprint in sectors or activities. The circle in the bottom shows you that this is not 13 tons per capita equally shared as a distribution that is connected to economic distribution and consumption patterns. And we did these calculations showing that if you have a low income and a very climate friendly way of living, you could reduce to below nine tons per person. And if you have a high income and an unfriendly climate friendly way of living, you could be on 25 tons per person or beyond that. So that's an important distributional aspect there as well. Considering reduction targets, we looking at the global trends, we need to see a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions by half in the coming decade or so. We also say that this could be a relevant Danish reduction target for consumption based emissions, so that would require a reduction by half from 2020 to 2030 in our recommendations. And also, if you see the global average today, it's around six tons per capita and according to the IPCC climate budgets and scenarios there, we should be at three tons per capita by 2030. So that's a major challenge to reach this and also considering the global distribution, we would argue that rich countries should more than half the consumption footprints in the next decade. But yeah, we also need to start somewhere with a politically relevant ambition. So that's the recommendation from Conceito and next slide. Yeah, that was it. Thank you very much, Michael. And that's the Denmark perspective. And we'll now turn back to the room. César Dugas to take us through the perspective from France. Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. So I'm going to present a few elements on the French carbon footprint and thank you very much for SCI for letting us work with you. So I'm with the carbon for a French consultancy that helps companies but also policymakers, NGOs and the general public do the right assessments and take the right decisions. So what can we say about the French consumption based emissions? So is it working? Yes. So what we can see is that French national footprint is currently at zero, which is very good news, right? No, actually we're going to step by step. So what can we find in the national footprint and the national inventory of France? So as was already said by Esther at the EU level, we start with the same or almost the same package, which is the direct emissions of the territory, either from household emissions or from domestic production, excluding exports. And then when you want to calculate the French national footprint, you have to add emissions from imports either for final use or for intermediate consumption. So what you can see first is that half of the French consumption based emissions are imported. If you want to calculate the national inventory, you have to include what we could produce inside of our territory but what we export as well. So more than half of our emissions are imported and domestic emissions are slightly lower than the carbon footprint with 423 million tons of CO2 per year. So if you look at the trend across the different, the latest years, you can see a slight, let's say a slight decrease because we have decreased in absolute terms our consumption based emissions, our carbon footprint by 7% since 1995. But what's interesting is that you have, as Ioannis said at EU level two different trends inside this. When you look at the bars, the blue bars, you have the light blue, which is the domestic emissions and the dark blue, which are the imports. When you look at the light blue, it is slightly decreasing. So we have decreased our domestic emissions by 33% since 1995. But at the same time, we have increased our imported emissions by 32% from 1995. So it's really important to look at different dynamics behind the decrease of carbon consumption based emissions. And when you look at the graph, you can also see red dots, which is the intensity per capita. Now we are a 9.2 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita, which is too high. We have to be around two tons of CO2 per capita in 2050 if we want to become carbon neutral. But good news is that these emissions per capita have decreased by almost 20% compared to 1995. But we have experienced a growth in the last year. When you break down the carbon footprint by different consumption categories, it's really interesting because you can see that transport accounts for one third of our average French individual carbon footprint, half of which is also imported. And when you look at transport, housing and food altogether, just those three represent three quarters, 75% of the total carbon footprint. So imported emissions in those different consumption categories are really significant in the appliances and other services emissions. But you also have a minority of imports in the housing emissions. Of course, you also have emissions related to public services in France. And then to just finish on recommendations that the High Council for Climate HCC have been doing to tackle Francis Carbon footprint. They have, well, recommended three areas, three avenues for action. The first is to improve monitoring of the emissions related to international exchanges. The good news is that starting from this year, the French administration has switched from SRIO model to MRIO model to calculate the carbon footprint. So for those who do not know what it means, it's really normal because I really discovered this like two months ago. But actually, it means that the calculation is going to become more precise, more accurate, and with much more detail on importation countries and so on. Second recommendation is to adapt the existing setup informed demand and oversee trade and support global ambition. And the third recommendation of the High Council for Climate is to reduce in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. And we also have good news here this year because the new version of the French climate strategy, the national climate strategy that is going to be updated and published this year. It's going to include a target on carbon footprint. I think it's going to be a 65% reduction from 2005 until 2015. So pretty good news. We are about to have a direction on this, but there is still lots to be done to effectively reduce our carbon footprint. That was it for France. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good to end on some good news from one of the member states. So that concludes our overview of the three member state case studies. And now I'm about to say I would like to hand to my colleague Antoine Auger who's from Institute for European Environmental Policy, one of our co-hosts today. And Antoine will do some presentations on the policy opportunities and also take us through to moderate the open discussion. So very shortly prepare your questions and comments so that we can have that open discussion very soon. Thank you so much and good afternoon everyone. So as a way of an introduction, I had a somewhat lengthy presentation on the current stage of where we are at and so on. But I think everything we've heard from the level from the member states is relatively clear that at the moment, our current sustainability crisis is driven by domestic action. Yes, very much, but also impacted by activities that extend beyond our borders. This happens mostly through trade, but not only if I were to mention, we should also mention the unfair tax competitions, tax havens, shifted profits of multinationals and other financial aspects. That's not for me. That's from the EU Sustainable Development Reports, which is an annual publication that the AUPA has been contributing to and which also confirms what we've heard this morning. Through this international spillover index is that the EU tends to generate large negative external spillover. These are driven primarily by unsustainable supply chains serving the consumption needs of EU countries and which eventually lead to negative environmental and social impact, such as GSG emissions, deforestation, water stress and so on. So, to curb this trade related negative spillover is not about simply restricting trade, because first of all, this is quite necessary for our sustainable development, both in the EU and abroad, especially for developing countries to generate employment and social economic developments. It's a matter of making trade more sustainable and more consistent with our global objectives, whether it's from the Paris Agreement, the global biodiversity framework, CSDGs and so on. So, how do we do that? The classic way to look at this from a new perspective at the moment is to look through the classic, let's say, multilayer layer trade perspective, the multilateral level, the bilateral level, the autonomous measures. So, unfortunately, these first two levels, multilateral and bilateral, are facing a lot of challenges at the moment. WTO is largely blocked for different reasons. We've had setbacks in the agreement of free trade, agreements of bilateral agreements with our partners lately, so the EU has largely reverted to autonomous measures, some say unilateral. This has created some diplomatic challenges for the EU on the global stage. Yet, it is important to look at this issue holistically, to look at this issue from a valued chain perspective, as Esther has mentioned when presenting the GRC model. We need to understand how and what we consume and where the environmental and sustainability impacts of our consumption are the strongest, but also where the value is created along the relevant value chains. So that eventually we can address our consumption-based emissions in the right policy framework and in a just manner for exporting countries, so that we can support them transitioning more towards environmentally sustainable development path. To do that, we have metrics, we have policies, we've heard of them this morning, we've heard about the SIBAM, we've heard about the EUDR, we've heard about the eco-design and due diligence legislations. I could speak about them for hours, but I would like to keep the floor open for everyone to contribute. So, now this objective of this next session is to debate on how best to further integrate the notions of consumption-based emissions in EU policies. I will try to entertain the debates and I would like to ask a few questions to everyone, but of course I will direct my question to some particular speakers of today, but by all means please feel free to reach out to take the floor. I wanted to turn first to the policy makers in the room, we have NMEP hosting us, thanks again for having us today, we have the European Commission for instance, we also have the member states with us. So, when looking at the policy landscape at the moment, I wanted to ask which policy measures could be introduced to effectively curb consumption-based emissions. What is missing at the moment when we look at all of the indicators that paint a very clear picture. So, and yes, looking particularly at the member states, if you want to further promote your own initiatives and explain as how this could be integrated at the EU level, then by all means do so. Please, the floor is open. Many thanks. Well, first of all, as I have presented this morning, I think that the priority is first to finalize the adoption of the proposals that are now on the table, not last the ESPR, the Regulation for Eco-designed for sustainable products to ensure the enforcement of this legislation and to fully implement on the ground. All this process takes time, it takes probably years, and I would say that it will probably take some additional time before the figures that we have on hand can show such a shift. I mean, in terms of carbon, I am a carbon footprint, I really very much welcome the approach from Saint-François, what was just presented, because that shows that clearly a consumption-based approach in terms of target that can also be complementary to the traditional production-based approach. When it comes to carbon footprint, okay, I cannot speak on behalf of the climate action director general, so I will stop here, but I would just like to reiterate the fact that in the eight environmental action program in the Circular Economy Action Plan, we have included this directional target of considerably decreasing material footprint, because this is not only important for ensuring a sustainable use of resources, but it also a clear leverage to meet climate neutrality. We cannot just have the package, I mean the package of fit for 55 is of course crucial, but it's not the only key instrument to meet the climate neutrality. The Circular Economy has a major role, and I think the discussion today has clearly stressed these, thanks. Well, from my point of view, I think the most important thing is actually to always have a better holistic view, no matter what kind of legislation we're working with. As I mentioned in the introduction, I mean in the Envy Committee and also in the Agri Committee, and usually when we are negotiating in the Environmental Committee, we get some sort of agreement and understanding across the different political groups, but where we're in the agricultural sector and trying to really implement sustainability in all the legislation discussed in the Agri Committee, it's very, very tricky, or should I say it's impossible, more or less, because we have this compact reaction from the more conservative part of the parliament that do not think that that sector is included, it's enough if we do it in other sectors, but we need to do this all the way through. And of course, not the least when it comes to trade agreements with other parts of outside the European Union, we need to make sure that all these trade agreements do include sustainability, both when it comes to ecological measures, but also of course when it comes to social measures. So that is something that I've been lacking throughout this period of legislation. I hope it will be improved during the next, if I'm still here. Thank you. Yeah, a small comment from me. I'm not going to speak about the policy landscape too much because we don't take part in that as the EA, but we did publish a report two years ago that I thought be interesting for this discussion. This is about climate friendly sourcing and my hat, the normal hat I have on is on a circular economy hat. So we looked at the way both the public and the private sector procure materials from global value chains because we live in a globalized world. So we tried to with this report to underline the potential of procurement to influence what happens elsewhere in the world. So not only the public procurement, which is of course a very significant part of things, but also individual companies that are that want to take action. There's a lot of ways that they can influence their suppliers elsewhere from the EU in the way that these suppliers produce the materials they need through, for instance, making, you know, conditions in their procurement practices, contracts and so on and so forth. So that just wanted to make that comment that we're we speak a lot about the public sector and rightfully so, of course, but there's also a big part, a big potential in a way that lies in the hands of the of the businesses and we should never ignore that one. Thank you so much. And I couldn't I could not agree more with what has been said if I if you allow me to leave my heart of a moderator for just a second but I hear the new the material footprint in general to be to be addressed. I hear the taking more holistic view into resource management and so on. I just want to point out that the IEP has just published a report specifically for an EU resource law as a missing piece of the European Green Deal as a key aspect to to manage to address or material footprint. So that should definitely we feel that this should be a priority for the next legislature. But please question and then. Thanks a lot. I'm Stefan from the European Parliamentary Resource Service. So thanks for the event. I really sincerely enjoyed and there were a lot of food for food. First disclaimer because my question could look like negative but I have a strong appreciation of what the European Union institutions and also all the let's say the NGOs and they do on this subject. But my question is connected to the question that was done by you on this and the question was how are we doing well. And I thought how a typical consumer a typical citizen thinks how we are doing well because we are we are measuring the consumption footprint per capita. And we have some data. So maybe it has it has kind of decreased from 2010. Not a lot. But what is the perception of a citizen of a consumer. Does he or she think that has decreased and to which kind of percentage. Because if is our perception. It's more positive than the reality it is. Then most probably there is this kind of rebound effect and we should consider that I think that we should analyze also the consumer behavior and the kind of perception that he has on this data. And then how we are doing well. Also I look to this graph that Barbara shows and it was about the consumption footprint per capita. And then you see that in 2018 and 2009 there was just a kind of collapse. Let's say that was the main kind of reduction. Is this related to the economic financial crisis is related to the GDP. And how we include this in the economic governance. I mean it's just a very recent subject. But I think we don't include this consumption footprint at the end. I mean if we just promote the fact that the member state that should produce more they should have a GDP which should increase always. I mean we can do whatever kind of regulation but and I like I mean the right to repair everything or the design but at the end is macroeconomics also that which which accounts. And then the very last comment and I apologize is about Esther because he spoke about data quality or things like that. How we include the black economy because there are some member states where you have a lot of black economy. I come from one of that is Italy. And how you can measure this because first black economy you cannot track. Secondly it's just the black economy that most probably is the less environment friendly sometimes. So these are my three questions. Thanks. Thank you so much. And I fully agree that the informal sector can be sometimes a gap in in all of this consideration. So perhaps could be is an important point to bring forward. Just wanted to just go back on your previous questions about what could be maybe ideas that we could suggest in order to improve action and measurement. So I'm really not speaking on behalf of all of the French people that are calculating our own carbon footprint. But from what I understood from our interviews I realized that member states across Europe might have different calculations methods. I think France is about to use the Figaro multi regional input output. And I think other countries are more based on exile base calculation. So maybe one comment would be that we could think together of how to harmonize the approach for calculating consumption based emissions. And maybe also in order to improve the precision of the calculation and expand the scope. I might suggest maybe adding some extensions to the Figaro database including for example more gases other than CO2 for example related to methane. And maybe land use change as well because I'm not sure these are included as well. So these could be ideas not for action for for a certain type of action that is here to improve the data quality which is maybe a good first step to harmonize between countries. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was very interesting. Thank you for all the presentations. My name is Luis Cofino. I work for Euro cities network of more than 200 big cities. So I would like to bring a bit the urban dimension to our discussion because we had the EU perspective and then the national one. I was very positively surprised to hear that 25 percent of the Swedish municipalities have a consumption based target because what I see when I work with cities is that we are just starting to raise awareness about consumption based emissions actually in our membership. At Euro cities we have only three cities that have strategies on how to reduce a consumption based emission namely Stockholm Paris and Amsterdam. And for those that are now a bit aware of their purchase power and how they can indirectly influence those emissions. They simply don't know where to start. So not speaking about how to reduce them. How do you calculate them and then how to reduce them. We are far away from that. So this is why I'm cities. European cities. They're asking me to have a EU target actually to reduce a consumption based emission. And also we were says I was just mentioning it. An EU calculation methodology to calculate and measure those emissions and then providing cities with support and training on how to do that. And I want to use this calculation because most of the time it's one of the difficulty they face. So two questions. One for the GRC. Are you working in such a methodology that could be used at local level. And then for the commission. But I know it's complicated. We are facing election very soon. But are you planning to come up with a target on reducing a consumption based emission in the next month date. Thank you very much. Thank you. Would you like to. Yeah. I can. Thanks for your question. Indeed. We have done a pilot study for the city of Torino in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Torino that is published where we adapted the consumption footprint framework to the city level. And that's that's available. It should be available in our website. But maybe we can share it to the information to the participants afterwards. So it can arrive to you. And regarding the comment on the informal economy. Indeed. We have not done such evaluation at the moment. But it's interesting to maybe go to the data sources that we use to understand how this might or might not be. Included. For example I was reflecting that we use totals of food production and food trade. So I would I wonder now in the data sources we use whether this might or might not include. And then regarding input output databases also. I'm not that sure actually how since they consider the total emissions this might already be included. I don't know if metal metal metal developers have reflected already on on this informal and informal economy. I don't know if you might have from the inside. No. Because I haven't looked into this in detail whether the informal economy is included in the supply use tables. But it's a good point to look into. The point on the targets. Well this is a very sensitive question. But you know really the answer. I mean we are at the end of the mandate of this commission so we will not propose any concrete quantitative reduction target on material footprint. But I would like to also mention that work is ongoing now from the Belgium presidency to prepare possible follow up of the circular economy action plan within the next commission also collecting ideas about how the next policy on circular economy can be taken up by the next commission. So the issues of monitoring and targets are clearly part of the discussion. I see that the stephanos pinachi has left but maybe I would like just to answer the question because one of the tool that the joint research center has developed beyond the macro level on consumption footprint is a consumer footprint calculator. The consumer footprint calculator is an interactive tool which is available and accessible to whoever who allows to calculate and to estimate the own ecological food consumption footprint of the of the user. And these has really three benefits. The first one is awareness raising. So you as a consumer can really quickly see how much you are impacting the environment. Secondly, the tool provides tips. So these tips allows you to decrease the consumption footprint thinking about decreasing the flight that you take every year or the way you can normally eat and consume your meals. And the third benefit is that it can easily the result of this calculation can be easily be compared with the new average, which is the one that is presented in the consumption footprint indicator and with the member state average. So you can easily see if you as a citizen in your in your country has a higher or lower consumption footprint. So this tool has been is available in the platform. We are also making efforts to disseminated father. I mean, everything is online in the presentation. I've also included a nipper link. And again, I would invite you to to use it in your daily life because in the transition everybody has a big role to play as a policymaker as a city as as a business or as a citizen. We are all citizens. So I think that we can start from there. Thank you. Thank you so much. And yes, indeed the aim of today is really to inform the research report that is being prepared by and by our friends at ACI but as a side effect just simply to share to raise the awareness of the existing tools that exist on the matter. I'm sure many of us are not fully aware of the extent of the research has been done both at the EU level and at member state level in terms of a research initiative. So that's just a good thing to keep in mind. Please. Thank you very much. My name is Bruno Capuzzi. I am from the Brazilian trade promotion agency, but I will allow myself to remove this hat and speak on the on behalf from my from my perspective from my from my researcher from enthusiasm of trade and environmental measures. So my question comes to the nice and interesting trial made by the European Commission and the GRC. The first the first one relates to the carbon footprint that understand that it was understood from the consumer consumer footprint that stayed close to the base while the the emissions from the production decreased. So my question is if you understand it as a carbon leakage, because if we look to academic research as such as from a professor Christopher Beringer or a professor of a Valero Costantini, they show that the hypothesis of carbon leakage hasn't been proved is a hypothesis from from this kind of measures, which leads me to the C band. And we know that there's a C band that will apply. It will be applied on important goods based on the on the emissions from the EU proper productions, which leads us to two possible scenarios when for when foreign goods have lower emissions than than than than EU, then it will be a problem for WTO co co co compliance and it could be the deoperate efforts for for countries to lower emissions or a scenario to when other countries actually have higher emissions than the EU, then this will not that will not be will not be efficacy, which leads to my third and final comment on international engagement. And we know that counters commitments within the parts agreements they are laid down within their indices on how they're going to reach those reductions, and meaning on which sectors they will they will choose to to reduce that but then if we have a scenario in which a measure such as the C band. They'll tell counter that they were going to have to reduce emissions in those sectors. I was going to be the international engagements if the if it's such a measure that the EU would be would be known in an in alignment with the counters autonomy to decide where they're going to reduce emissions or not. So the word tree, the customer for footprint regarding to carbon leakage, the efficacy of the C band when imparted good they have lower or higher emissions and the international engagements considering counter autonomy to determine their indices. Thank you. Thank you for a question and of course I can give the opportunity to respond to these points also bearing in mind that we're reaching the end of that of that particular session so if you'd like to respond to if you could ask you to please keep it brief. Addressing the first question what we observe is an externalization of the impacts, meaning two things either you are consuming more and instead of consuming it from the EU production you are importing it that could be for example. I think we observe that in the close sector know all these companies like Shane, etc. that are entering the market with low prices and this is promoting an increase of number of pieces or elements that you are consuming so the impacts are in those production areas. Or second we have observed also the localization of parts of the supply chain. So you are consuming companies that are based in the EU and that they sell the final product in the EU but part of the supply chain it's elsewhere. So the impact is taking place in third country so that's two of the main reasons that we have observed for this increase in the gap between the effect of the EU policy in the territory but the continuous either a stabilization or a slight increase of the consumption footprint. I would not like to add more to what was just said again again just to reiterate the fact that we will need to see full implementation of the mechanism that has been adopted by the commission and this probably will take some time before we get the results. So I don't want to say that this is enough but again this is up to the next commission to see how we can move forward and even advance quicker because we don't have much time left. Thank you. Thank you. Please. Very shortly Hans Wolters I'm chair of the board of IEP but I think we have a communication problem. All the policies that have been discussed today are good policies that are maybe here and there are maybe not perfect but we know more or less what we need to do but we have farmers protest we have populist parties etc. So we seem to not be able to communicate these essential policies in an incredible way to our audiences to our voters etc. So I think we have to think also our think tanks very much about how to bring these messages across and the commission talked about that but I think this is one of the essential things. Second thing is it should be socially just because if we're not able to take with us the people who are less affluent if we're not able to make the energy transition socially just etc. If we're not able to make it sure that it is affordable by free raising prices while making it fair via taxes etc. We won't succeed. So I think communication and thinking about a socially fair way of getting these policies accepted are essential for getting where we need to go. Thank you. Thank you Hans and just think that not extremely fair to bring the elephant in the room at five past on this on these topics but absolutely this is a very good time for us to remind ourselves that at some point when you talk about consumption based emission material footprints and the like the acceptability is a social accepted the acceptability of any governments measures that we bring forward is absolutely to be taken into account. So then I'm going to pass on to back to back to a host but as a missing piece so do we agree that there are a lot of the regulations a lot of legislation a lot of indicators existing at the moment do we agree or not that we would like to see a new legislation addressing specifically consumption based emission, including an overall target at the level, including implementation plans for the member states and the local and the local authorities, including some of the right indicators and the calculation measures that could be taken consistency throughout the EU, including support measures to make sure that everyone can be can be put on board. That's long like an easy job to do. Please for the next legislator. Thank you so much for the for your participation to this conversation and please as a host. You have the concluding remarks. Thank you and I guess I have something to do then during the next legislation period. First of all, thank you very, very much for this session and this discussion. Of course, this is a very, very important topic. After all, there are no other economy in the world apart from European Union exporting as large amounts of carbon emissions or climate footprint or whatever we should call it. But at the same time, I think it's also important to never forget from a more meter level that the basic problem is still that we are using fossil energy and we stuck in economical system of financial system that more or less need financial growth to be stable and then to address consumption in that perspective. It's a bit tricky and I fully agree with what you said. It's not the least in the current political landscape where we have a lot of populism just trying to say that whatever we do within the European Union is too much. It's someone else's fault. The other thing I would like to mention is something that I probably don't need to mention in this room, but we are really in a very, very severe climate emergency. We saw during 2023 for the first time a global temperature, which was very, very near 1.5 degrees. I'm a meteorologist, so I'm sort of a bit nerdy when it comes to these figures, but with the current onset of a new El Nino at the Pacific Ocean, who was probably see an either warmer year this year, 2024. This acceleration of the global warming that we're seeing currently is really not well understood by the climate scientists, the climate experts. Everyone that I've discussed with are sort of astonished by the fact that we are already at 1.5 degrees. And we have to bear in mind when we are using data from IPCC, etc., looking at the carbon budgets or carbon dioxide budgets that they do not really fully implement the fact that we have this acceleration of global warming at the moment, which means that the situation is even worse than we thought just one or two years ago. But still everything we've discussed today is very, very important. I would like just to mention a few things. The European Parliament has again and again called for binding consumption footprint reduction targets. Barbara Ioannis, is that correct? Yes. You've both been others as well. As mentioned, the Eighth Environmental Action Program, I was involved in negotiating that. And while the parliament actually supported introducing binding targets, then the final legislation of negotiation with Member States says such targets should be introduced as appropriate. But to me, it's obvious that it is very much appropriate right now. And in the latest resolution, the parliament also adopted to establish its mandate for COP28. The parliament affirmed some of my amendments to the resolution, which stressed that the latest IPCC reports recognition of the importance and also mitigation potential of sufficiency and demand side policies. And it also highlights that demand reduction and shifts in consumption patterns can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in end-use sectors by as much as 40 to 70 percent by 2050. And we encouraged all parties to take this into account when they established their NDCs. And in all of this, as is true with all policymaking, we need to take into account equity and equality in the measures that we adopt, as many of you have mentioned. And the potential to reduce emissions by reducing consumption is, of course, highest in countries and population segments with relatively high levels of consumption. We must never forget that we need to combine ecological sustainability with social sustainability. Myself, I've worked quite a lot on consumption-based emissions from the perspective of the textile sector through my work in the EU's textile strategy. And in this sector, as in many other sectors as well, but in this sector, it's clear that it's not the ones with few means that need to change their fashion consumption habits. And in this way, more sustainable consumption patterns and habits is also a question of equity and equality. The parliament, though, through its adoption of the EU textile strategy and building on its position on the Circle Economy Action Plan, is clear on the fact that a paradigm shift is really needed to end this overproduction and unsustainable consumption. And my co-host, Sara, also mentioned the problems with overconsumption and overproduction in her introduction. I mean, let's face it, we're doing some good things. We need this eco-design directive, the forestation law and the CBAM, et cetera, but we also need really binding targets for this, because we're not on track. And we need to clearly steer all relevant legislation, such as legislation on eco-design or on waste, to be in line with that target that we set. That's a better holistic view, as I mentioned earlier. And as a green, I also need to stress that green politics often get sort of misconstrued as to be moralizing or putting this on an individual responsibility, which is, of course, completely wrong. We need to change the system, the society. And there is, to me, anyhow, nothing moralizing at all in recognizing that all emissions need to be reduced, or about the principle that a polluter pays, or having targets and measures at systemic level. As the EEA has highlighted today and also in the monitoring report, the progress towards the EAP objectives for those who live in the EU are unlikely to decrease their material footprints in the coming years. And this is the same, of course, when it comes to the fit for 55 climate overall targets. We are not in line to even reach 55% by 2030, whereas science says that we need to be much more ambitious, at least trying to reach 70%. But we're not even in line with 55%. And still, most of the communication from EU sounds like, well, we're doing this and we're best in the world, and we're online to be in reach with the Paris Agreement, et cetera. Unfortunately, we're not. The EAP also sets out a clear objective, as many of you mentioned, to transition our economy to a well-being economy within the planetary boundaries. As a long-time friend with Johan Rockström, I remember when Johan and James Hansen and others came up with these planetary boundaries. And as you probably know, the planetary boundary for climate is 350 parts per million in the atmosphere, and we're currently at 420 pre-industrial levels, 280. That means that the planetary boundary says that, yes, we can increase at least for a while the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 25% relative to the pre-industrial levels. Now we're at 50%. And we're still talking about climate neutrality by 2050, which means that the amount of carbon dioxide will increase until 2050, which means that the global warming will continue to accelerate until 2050. So we're far outside of the planetary boundaries, and still a lot of the members of this European Parliament, not the least in the environmental committee, often communicate and discuss as if we still have some more time to waste as if we would still be within the planetary boundaries. Unfortunately, we're outside of it. And when it comes to economy, finally, I would like to stress the fact that we mustn't forget that the economy is really dependent on ecology. From a bigger perspective, economy and ecology is more or less the same. But we've created this economical system, this financial system that, as I mentioned in the beginning, first of all, more or less needs some sort of exponential growth to be stable, but also a system that isn't really at all aware of taking full responsibility of the ecological situation. And the way that we govern our societies, the different countries and the European Union and from a global perspective, of course, has to reflect this. But once again, thank you very much for all your thoughts and input in this discussion.