EU Policymakers · ATLAS
Kerstin JORNA
European Commission · Director-General · GROW
Policy topics Kerstin JORNA is active on
What Kerstin JORNA has said (8)
- “Thank you very much. Um, to the last speaker I mentioned as my introductory image, Gulliver and the strings. So if Gulliver has no strings, he will be sitting next to the Giants and Gulliver being the single market economy. I want to walk through a couple of common threads that were in your interventions. The first is where's the single market? This was really about a clean industrial deal. It was about the industry. The single market strategy will come in June. And of course, you have to see all of this as part of the delivery of the political guidelines in the new mandate. And obviously, the single market that's core to many policies on this. Also simplification. Simplification is totally and utterly necessary, but it's not enough. So we've provided our first proposal for simplification already. Also, what we realize is it's not enough to have simplification only on the regulatory side and on the EU regulatory side. We also need to look at the member states. A lot of strings around Gulliver's legs actually are Member States regulations or even below regional regulations. We need to see all of that in a good way in the mirror, and then work on how to remove those. And, um, the you can count on us on being very determined on this. Also the legislations that will actually implement the clean industrial deal, for example, the Accelerator Act, some of you mentioned this or also the public procurement. It's all driven by the business case logic and the business case. I come back to it, its inputs, its energy, its people, its funding, its market, and we need our legislation and what we propose need to actually enable that.”
EU Single Market harmonisation
- “Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone. Before I start, I'd like you to imagine a picture, Gulliver, tied down by all the Lilliput people with lots and lots of strings. Gulliver is the single market economy, and we need to free Gulliver to leverage the strength of our market, which is one of the biggest in the world. And to make our voice heard. And the clean industrial deal is really about that freeing Gulliver, making sure that our companies and industries can scale, can use the full scale of the single market to transform, to decarbonise and to be more competitive. And of course, the single market strategy coming later is also part of this cutting the strings for Gulliver to be heard. And I don't think that anybody would doubt how much Europe needs the single market economy to be strong, to be heard in the current situation. When I come to the clean industrial deal, it's really about the business case of our companies, whether they are small or big in the single market and the business case of a decarbonised industry, in particular, a decarbonised energy system and a decarbonised energy system is not a luxury. It's really essential for us because we don't have other energy in the EU, so we need to harvest sun and wind, and we need to build an energy system that actually can deliver, that can deliver that, which means dealing with the intermittency, dealing with the grid, and that will be its main input for our industry.”
Energy (green transition) · EU Single Market harmonisation
- “Over time, the levelized cost of wind and sun energy is much lower than any other type of energy, including fossil energy. Now being if the business case is the guiding, the guiding thread of the single market strategy of the clean industrial deal, then it's really about the inputs. It's about the energy, it's about the funding. It's about the lead markets. It's about access to operations, the permitting issue, and it's about the skills. And I will highlight some of these elements which are common to any and every business case, really. Um, on the inputs, it's very much about the materials we have, the critical raw materials act and, and everything that's kind of building on, on promoting the business case of raw material extraction, refining and recycling in Europe. There will also be the circularity, uh, act, which will in particular look at waste. I personally think we don't. We should not use the word waste anymore because everything can be a material, and it's about enhancing the business case to transform everything into material. And of course, it means also that things that could become a new material should not leave the EU market.”
Circular economy · Sourcing of critical raw materials
- “And that's a debate. For example, we have on black mass for batteries on energy. I already said it's urgent and indispensable to decarbonize our energy system. The there is a separate document which comes with the Clean industrial Deal, which is about the Affordable Energy Action Plan, and you will see issues in there again, leveraging the size and the scale of the single market, like more common permitting rules like power purchase agreement and how we can frame them, standardize them across the single market. Networking charges energy taxes to bring down the energy price. I turn to the funding here. It's about really mobilising all possible and available EU funds to also leverage private investment in the smartest way possible, and to allow companies to actually scale up innovative solutions for decarbonizing and and building the, the the renewable energy system on markets. Um, it's very much about creating a market for the decarbonized projects and also creating a market that would avoid or prevent Europe from being dependent on something again. So building on net zero Industry Act and the thinking about how to avoid dependencies. We are looking at at creating markets through labels, for example on cement, building on the construction product regulation for steel, low carbon steel, for low carbon hydrogen. And we are also looking obviously at the public procurement rules.”
Energy (green transition) · EU policy on permitting for renewable energy projects
- “As such with the reform that was already announced, and we will detail a bit more also in the single market strategy. It's about making sure that when European taxpayers money is involved, that this can also contribute to creating resilient and sustainable, uh, and sustainable in the broad sense, socially correct markets in Europe. Then there is also the point about permitting access to operations. We have experimented in Net Zero Industry Act and Critical Raw Materials Act and in repower with aligning permitting rules between member states, because that's a strong signal to investors and also project promoters, and we want to further implement that as well. In conclusion, I mean, the three topics I would see here is of the critical clean industrial deal is Europe is a player, not a playground. And I quote here, my boss Stéphane Séjourné two, that the ultimate KPI for the the effectiveness of the clean industrial deal and everything that's following also in the sectoral applications ranging from chemicals to automotive to metals is the business case. Do we build a strong business case in the single market, where we can also use the scale of the single market? And the third point is that competitiveness is good, decarbonized competitiveness is better, and we have a strategy to actually achieve that. Thank you.”
State Aid · EU Single Market harmonisation
- “Sorry. Yes I've got. So public procurement today is latest numbers 15% of GDP. And in these 15% of GDP 20% are above the thresholds of our current public procurement directives. So just to give you an order of, uh, of grandeur on the public procurement today, we have a little half a dozen of directives for different sectors, different elements of the package. We also have grown, over time, uh, 50 plus legislations that address some issues of public procurement, some qualitative criteria for certain sectors. It's very clear that for the 350,000 contracting authorities, this is very difficult to navigate. Um, it's grown really complex. So what we want to do is actually help the 350,000 to navigate in a better way and to streamline the legislation and to make it easier for them to also use the public procurement, their investments, actually for electric buses, just to name one example, to make it useful for, Uh products produced according to the legislation, uh, sustainable legislation produced in Europe and made in Europe to handle that in a good way and not prolong investment decisions and not make them more complicated. Rather to allow a market perspective for these products in the European single market, because Gulliver is a very big market. Thank you. And the proposal we expected, um. End 2025 2626. Sorry, but the consultations will now will now start. And the real question will be how much simplification would we be looking for here? Um, and what to do with the 50 plus texts? Can we consolidate this? Can we consolidate this around certain principles that would be easy to handle for the contracting authorities, and at the same time give companies a perspective to produce against such principles. Thank you.”
"Buy European" provisions · EU Single Market harmonisation
- “Our Commissioners are now starting to work on chemical Industry Action Plan, so there will be a sectoral deep dives to translate the clean industrial deal. Also on on a sector level, where will be, where will be, who will take responsibility of. This was also one of the questions. This is a whole of commission effort and that's what really is needed. And you see the different contributions and the different, um, and the different expertise from across the commission coming in into the clean industrial deal, but also in the more sectoral, uh, sectoral deep dives and, and action plans. We have the annual Single Market and competitiveness report, which will work as the ultimate, how should I say monitor how things are improving? And that is published every January, every year, and that will be used and will gather information across the whole single market economy to to be able to understand also where maybe additional action is needed and where additional focus is needed. In the in the implementation of this plan. The industrial clean industrial deal is really a growth strategy for the single market economy. And if you look at the rate of innovation and uptake of innovation on decarbonization, on energy efficiency, on transforming our energy system into a more renewable based on Uh, new types of propulsion on new types of electrolyzers. You see that there is a very strong push that was created by the legal framework and the legislative framework that we have now. We really have to make it work in a good way in the implementation as well. Thank you.”
EU Single Market harmonisation
- “It's not kind of planning the economy. It's really looking at where is the problem for the business case. And we started with critical raw materials because there were a couple of problems around these five elements, and we addressed the ones at EU level where this was appropriate. Net zero industry act the same, always building on the five elements. And the same will be for the industrial for the Decarbonisation Accelerator Act funding. State aid is not about more or less state aid. It's about aligning what we do because we have EU budget nice 1% whose sole purpose is to support the European public good. But then you have member states also supporting European public good and we need to put that together. This is in fact the philosophy behind the Ipsa, where, for example, when it comes to the European battery value chain, we combine national from different member states funding and EU funding, and we want to do that in a in an even better way in the future. So it's not about just opening state aid and and putting it everywhere. It's about having a smarter way of using public money to work together, EU and national money, and to allow for private money to also come in, which is the leverage effect. And one of the simplification proposals that we presented with a clean industrial deal actually looks at how we can use invest EU, our big guarantee to be simpler and therefore leverage more private money. The question is what's here in the clean industrial deal? There is a lot of trance. I mean, it's not so much on the sectors but the sectors that are coming actually, because we already have the automotive action plan we have, we will have this week a steels and metals action plan.”
Sourcing of critical raw materials · State Aid