EU Renew

Strengthening the Single Market by Guiding Consumer Behaviour In the mid-2020s, the European Union will face a strategic challenge: production and consumption will move outside Europe at an accelerating pace, especially to China and other low-cost countries. Although this is a rational decision for the consumer – buying the cheapest possible – it causes job losses, erosion of the tax base and weakening of the sustainability of the internal market in the EU. The current structures are not sufficient to steer consumer behaviour towards more sustainable choices that are strategically important for Europe. New thinking is needed. To this end, we propose the creation of an EU Origin preferential system. This would be a common European mechanism for the identification and incentive, the aim of which would be to make consumer products produced in Europe more economically, emotionally and practically more attractive to the consumer – without violating competition rules or WTO obligations. The ...

Digital Carbon & Social Adjustment Duty (CSAD) The European Union needs a modern, data-driven tool to compensate for the externalities caused by cheap foreign imports. The Carbon & Social Adjustment Duty (CSAD) is an expanded and digitized version of the current Carbon Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) that takes into account not only the carbon footprint of a product, but also its production conditions and social impact. The CSAD would particularly target consumer products such as electronics, clothing and furniture imported from outside the EU, often priced on low labour costs, non-compliance with environmental standards or even human rights violations. Customs duty would be determined automatically on the basis of product data, which importers would have to report digitally to the EU customs system. For products from high-risk countries, a modelled impact-based minimum level would be used. The revenue from customs duties would be directed to targeted European product development, ...

A New Economic Policy Instrument to Strengthen Europe's Single Market The future of the European Union relies more and more on how efficiently it is able to direct economic financial flows back to its own region – especially through the everyday consumption of citizens. The current situation, in which a significant share of private consumption is focused on goods produced outside the EU, will lead to job losses, tax base erosion and a weakening of strategic self-sufficiency in the long term. We need a way to make it directly profitable for citizens to support European production. This is the response to the Citizen's Dividend from Local Consumption – a new proposed return mechanism that brings tangible financial benefits from European purchases. How does the model work? The citizens' dividend is based on the idea that the purchase of products and services manufactured in the EU creates social value, the return of which to the individual strengthens the European market.  He...

A European consumer brand that turns money into a political act The economic future of the European Union is not only built on export-driven industry or regulatory capacity. It is built on the daily shopping basket of every European citizen – the choices they make when buying clothes, household appliances or services. In this field of choices, the EU is not currently present as a visible or emotional actor. The consumer acts rationally: he/she buys the cheapest, fastest or most familiar product, regardless of the origin of the product or its social impact. This is economically understandable, but strategically unsustainable. "Your Euro, Your Job" is a proposal for an EU-level brand campaign that does not aim to steer consumption with regulations, but with emotion and awareness. Its core message is simple but impressive: every euro spent either builds your community or breaks it down. The campaign makes it visible that money is never neutral – every purchase has a direction,...