The new European Commission (EC) presented its flagship “European Green Deal” initiative to the public, the European Parliament and to European leaders.
EC President Ursula von der Leyen has made climate change a top priority for her term. The European Green Deal aims at making the EU climate neutral by 2050. The EC proposal outlines the timeline for a set of policy measures that should help to establish reallocation mechanism, foster investment shifts, while supporting the most vulnerable segments of society.
At the Green Deal’s core of the policy is an outline of ‘deeply transformative policies’ that should be designed and agreed upon, such as a European ‘Climate Law’ enshrining the 2050 climate neutrality objective (to be presented by the EC in March 2020) and a Just Transition Mechanism (to be presented in January 2020).
Under the part ‘Mainstreaming sustainability in all EU policies’, the EC outlines how it sees education contributing to the Green Deal: First of all, the EC will prepare a European Competence Framework to develop and evaluate knowledge, skills and attitude on climate change and sustainable development. In view of this, the EC will also provide material and foster good practice exchange among schools, training institutions and higher education institutions. Second, all this will be of little use if school buildings and operations are not sustainable: This is why the EC announced to leverage €3 billion of investment in ecological and energy efficient school infrastructure in 2020 through synergies involving structural funds and stronger collaboration with the European Investment Bank. Last, the EC will support re-skilling and up-skilling through the European Social Fund+ and an update of both the Skills Agenda and the Youth Guarantee, in order to enhance employability in growing sectors of the green economy.
Speaking of other actions susceptible of having an impact on EU education policy, the EC most importantly intends to align all of its new initiatives with the Green Deal and to promote innovation that support the Deal’s objectives. In addition, a Sustainable Europe Investment Plan is foreseen by January 2020, and an EU Industrial Strategy is expected to be presented by March 2020.
In comparison to earlier drafts, some things do also not appear explicitly anymore in the Green Deal, such as the integration of the ‘green mobility’ concept into Erasmus+ post-2020.
In addition to some criticism towards content of the Green Deal and its scope of the measures – some would have liked them to be more ambitious – it has been criticised that it is not clear where the money should come from. EU leaders are currently discussing the EU’s next multiannual financial framework (MFF), and in this context also how they want to finance EU initiatives related to the Green Deal. Yet, a final deal is not struck yet (see SwissCore article).