In May 2021, the European Commission updated its Industrial Strategy to support the transformation to a more sustainable, digital, resilient and globally competitive economy, notably in the post-COVID-19 recovery context. Building on an ecosystem-based approach, the new updated strategy called for the involvement of stakeholders in the elaboration of transition pathways for the 14 industrial ecosystem’. Released in December 2021, the Action Plan for proximity and social economy reaffirmed the ambition to launch a transition pathway for the proximity and social economy ecosystem in view of maximizing the contribution of its entities to the green and digital transitions.
Following the co-creation process, the Commission released on 14 November 2022 its transition pathway for the proximity and social economy ecosystem. Building on 14 actions areas, the pathway pinpoints avenues of actions for a strengthened and more resilient social economy ecosystem in the context of the ongoing twin transition. Ranging from business-to-business collaboration and multi-stakeholder partnerships to investing in infrastructure and access to innovation and technology, the pathway puts forward a set of measures and identify the relevant actors and the timeframe for such actions to be introduced.
In the framework of the co-implementation phase which started with the publication of the pathway, the Commission has launched a call for pledges aiming at collecting concrete actions social economy entities and other relevant stakeholders will undertake to help achieve the actions laid out in the pathway. Pledges will be collected and assessed on a rolling-basis.
The next cut-off date to submit your pledges is 1st December 2023
Pledges already published can be found here.
More information on the transition pathway for proximity and social economy can be found here
Upcoming platform
To support stakholders regarding their work related to the twin transitions the European Commission will create a transition pathway platform that will facilitate exchanges with and between stakeholders. For this a new tender was launched in November 2023: "Transition pathway stakeholder support platform: implementation for the ‘proximity and social economy’ ecosystem".
Deadline for receipt of tenders: 29/01/2024 16:00 (Brussels time). For more details see here.
The aim of tender is twofold:
1) to support the co-implementation process of the ‘proximity and social economy’ ecosystem based on an IT platform being currently developed for the purpose.
2) to ensure active content updates, community activity, capcity building, support and facilitation for actors of the ‘proximity and social economy’
The tender will make the best use of a provided EU-level stakeholder support platform and its functionalities, to provide actors in the ‘proximity and social economy’ with easy access to the knowledge, resources and connections that support them in their twin transition, to make their services and operations more green, digital and resilient. Moreover, the platform will allow to connect and interact with actors from other industrial ecosystems.