Making the green and digital transition a story of success and resilience in the context of global value chains relies on the capacity of the textile ecosystem to reinvent itself. Enhancing research and innovation and promoting investments in the sector are essential to tap into its potential to create sustainable growth and local jobs and should be a priority at EU, national and regional level.

The New European Bauhaus translates the European Green Deal into tangible initiatives that promote sustainable lifestyles, including fashion. As part of this programme and under the #ReFashionNow motto, the Commission will support projects that increase sustainability of fashion while meeting demands related to aesthetics and inclusivity.

The Commission is also working on a common industrial technology roadmap on circularity, which aims at streamlining industrial research and innovation, including on textile recycling. This is supported by a recently published study on the effectiveness of current recycling capabilities of textile waste, highlighting the need innovate further to strengthen them.

Public Private Partnerships will define future research initiatives and ensure leadership and excellence of the ecosystem. For instance, the Made in Europe Partnership will champion the digitally enabled, competitive, green, socially sustainable and resilient manufacturing and use of textiles. Support also focuses on reducing industry’s dependence on fossil fuels with bio-based innovation in the textiles sector, through the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking, which aims to boost inter alia the development of new types of textile fibres. The European Partnership Process4Planet aims at promoting circularity and an extensive decarbonisation of European process industries, including textiles industry, by developing and deploying the innovation needed through initiatives such as Hubs for Circularity (H4C). In addition to continued funding by existing programmes such as the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), specific calls under Horizon Europe will be launched to further develop technologies and processes to scale up repair, improve collection and sorting, scale up textile recycling capacities of the EU industry, and increase fibre-to-fibre recycling and the uptake of recycled fibre content. Social innovation will also be key, in particular to foster reuse-focussed enterprises.

The Commission will co-finance projects on technological innovation for circular fashion business models under LIFE and support the uptake of partnerships within the social and circular economy. The textile ecosystem can also benefit from the opportunities provided by the European Regional Development Fund, which supports transformation in regions and makes funding available for research and innovation, digitalisation, SME competitiveness, skills development, digital connectivity, circular product design and production processes.

The Commission will encourage companies of the textiles ecosystem to participate in initiatives to develop the European Green Deal Dataspace and the Manufacturing Dataspace, so as to more easily share and reuse data across companies. Broader support for digital innovation is provided by the Network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, which will develop the digital infrastructures needed to test new digital technologies and to help the sector's workforce to better understand the opportunities of digitalisation and update their technological expertise.

Member States have also a key role in providing support to research, innovation and investments, including by using loans and grants of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). For instance, Portugal has already indicated its plans to support investments aimed at modernising and developing a national circular bio-industry to increase the incorporation of bio-based materials in textiles. France plans to develop innovation in different areas, including recycling and reincorporation of recycled materials, with textiles identified among the five priority materials. Italy is considering to establish Recycling Hubs to collect, sort and process textile waste. In addition, many components on innovation and digitalisation in the national plans can provide support to the ecosystem, such as purchases of digital equipment.

Mobilising private investment in sustainable textiles is essential. Based on the work of the Sustainable Finance Platform of experts, the Commission is considering the adoption of technical screening criteria determining, among others, what constitutes a substantial contribution to circular economy in the manufacture of apparel under the Regulation on Taxonomy for Sustainable Investments, along with criteria regarding pollution from finishing of textiles.

Source: European Comission

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