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Orgalime In-Brief edition 36.

 

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Orgalime welcomes the 2050 energy roadmap, as amongst other things it launches an urgently needed thorough discussion on the modernisation of Europe's current energy supply and seeks to develop a long term European technology neutral framework in which European and national policies should become more effective.  All this with a view to providing greater predictability and certainty for investment, growth and jobs in Europe and overall welfare for its people in a modern society.

Orgalime are convinced that Europe's future energy supply is the basis for shaping our future: closing the gap in European-wide harmonisation with ambition while realism to not hamper the competitiveness of European industries on a global scale and its growth in the internal market is the common responsibility, and we believe, also the common interest [more]  

The work on the alignment of 9 technical Directives trundles on. Orgalime welcomes the Draft Reports prepared by Ms Roithová, the Rapporteur of the Internal Market and Consumer Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. They nicely reflect most of Orgalime's concerns about inconsistencies in the Commission's recast proposal.

We especially welcome suggestions to:

• Further align the 9 directives with the NLF (including a reference to in-house accredited bodies) and ensure legal certainty (reference to the principle of non-retroactivity of the law)
• Reduce the red tape on issuing the declaration of conformity (possibility of an electronic format)
• Insist on ensuring better market surveillance for products placed on the internal market 

[more]

Mechanical engineering industry - Competitiveness study follow-up

 

The study describes the industry as strong and healthy and expects a bright future for mechanical engineering in Europe. The study also highlights the central role played by the mechanical engineering industry for climate change policies to meet Europe's environmental challenges, such as resource efficiency and energy.

After establishing a strict and straightforward austerity and stability policy, the EU must now have to focus on the question of  how to create more growth in order to mitigate the consequences of the debt crisis. In this context, the mechanical engineering industry can and must play a strong role.  If the EU wants to create more growth, it must build on the strengths of the real economy and the European mechanical engineering industry has the following to offer:

• It is a traditionally strong industry in Europe with a broad base and still ahead of its global competitors in many areas.
• It is an industry that has managed to keep its share of the world market in the face of strong developments in particular in China.
• It is a future industry and has the potential to help in creating the necessarily needed growth in Europe.
• It is one of Europe's major employers
• It is an industry which also helps to achieve the other important political objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, such as climate change, energy and resource efficiency.
• It enables other industries to become more competitive, efficient and environmentally-friendly and is therefore a key industry in Europe.

[more]

 

Council to make Energy Efficiency Directive less efficient!

We must all strive for a common understanding of the Ecodesign Directive, its application and future deliverables at all levels, which acknowledges the considerable effort, commitment and investments of European engineering industries made to make the Directive work on the ground.

However, we must stress that improving the energy efficiency of appliances can only be one step in contributing to the achievement of the EU´s energy policy objectives.  Only if efforts under this Directive are complemented by instruments, which incentivise the uptake of energy efficient solutions, including through action on other energy policy initiatives, such as the Energy Efficiency Directive, Connecting Europe Facility Regulation or Energy Roadmap follow up, can potential for reaching the 20/20/20 objectives be obtained, which of course would benefit the consumer, environment and society as a whole.

We encourage regulators to take equally ambitious decisions on these other policy instruments, too [more]

As the international sale of products represents the core business of companies in the mechanical and electrical engineering industries in Europe, Orgalime soon recognised that these companies would benefit from a set of General Conditions for the supply of products, which could be used worldwide.  The original version of the Orgalime Supply Conditions was first published in 1992 (S 92 conditions) and these conditions have ever since been among Orgalime's most widely used legal publications.

They are used in a very large-scale with well over 1,000,000 hard copies sold since their publication and they are the biggest pull to our licensing website, where hundreds of companies from all over the world have purchased a licence for the use of Orgalime's standardised conditions in electronic format [more ]