This session is fully dedicated to youth social entrepreneurship and its attractiveness. It also gathers relevant experts from the EU, international and local levels that will present opportunities of EU policies, the state of play of young social entrepreneurs but also challenges that still need to be tackled followed by concrete recommendations

Organiser: EUROPEAN NETWORK OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION ENTERPRISES (ENSIE)

Moderators:

• Pauline Bonino
• Aziza Yussupova

Speakers:

• Patrick Klein
• Julien de Beys
• Antonella Noya
• Angela Achitei
• Thomas Laleu

This session will explore the main actions and instruments that should be deployed for the acceleration of the sustainability transition of SMEs. The discussion will inspire and give advice to authorities, business and civil society organisations on how to jointly develop and put in place adequate mechanisms that identify and support SMEs access to green and sustainable technologies, business solutions, R&D partners and facilities, skills, dedicated funding and markets and thus facilitate their innovation, growth, resilience and competitiveness.

A new long-term vision for the EU's chemical policy is now defined by the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. It proposes a transformation of the EU chemicals industry becoming global leader in the production and consumption of safe and sustainable chemicals and materials, including through low-carbon, zero pollution and energy- and resource-efficient processes and technologies. It is now necessary to define the pathway to be followed by the chemicals industry and all main stakeholders for this transformation to happen. This session aims to identify the key elements - e.g. Safe and Sustainable by Design - as well as the challenges, opportunities and milestones of the transition pathway in a discussion with representatives from the EU institutions, the chemicals sector, civil society and the audience.

Agri-food sector is identified as one of the 14 industrial ecosystems spanning across the EU, so cross-sectorial R&D collaboration and innovations are essential to ensure the ecosystem’s future sustainability, accelerate green and digital transition. On the other hand, photonics is a key enabling technology that plays an important role in building more circular EU economy, a climate-neutral and digital single market. Adapting light technologies to the Agri-food sector will enable new tools for twin transition. During this session we will discuss cross-sectorial collaboration towards twin transition, what kind of support schemes for demo projects already exists, what success stories do we already have, and what the future holds.

Organiser: AgriFood Lithuania DIH /LITEK

The ‘transition pathways’ will guide the industrial ecosystems along the green and digital transition through an actionable plan, with the ultimate goal of strengthening the resilience of our European industrial fabric. They are being co-created by a wide array of stakeholders, including EU institutions, industrial representations, Member States authorities, NGOs, research institutes and social partners. In this context, the Industrial Forum - set up by the Industrial Strategy – plays a very important role. One of the objectives of the Forum is to deepen the systematic analyses of industrial ecosystems and support the development of these transition pathways. In this session, the European Commission will present the results of this intense co-creation process and a high-level panel will discuss the practical implementation of such pathways.

The digital and green transitions open unprecedented opportunities for Europe, yet they also bring certain challenges. Inequalities across Europe caused by globalisation, technological change, previous economic crisis or current COVID-19 pandemic are hampering sustainable growth and can lead to social conflict, reduced participation in society, increased social exclusion, potentially undermining the future of our youth. Joint forces of industry and civil society can provide solutions to those societal challenges beyond the creation of jobs and growth and become a resilient provider of prosperity, by making production respect the boundaries of our planet and placing the wellbeing and participation of the industry worker at the centre of the production process. At the same time, the industrial transformation should serve to create new relationship with a wide set of stakeholders at the local level and in our “proximity economies”. At this level, citizens engagement models can cross-fertilise with business models. Those belong to the heart of social economy. Those business models are very attractive for young entrepreneurs, but also for young citizens to engage in a business process, such as for example a cooperative society or a volunteer association amongst other forms. Bringing those actors together with public authorities in a “local proximity and social economy ecosystem” is therefore a promising avenue for new or reinforced public private partnerships.

Moderator:

• Diana Dovgan

Speakers:

• Mohammed Ridouani
• Francesca Montalti
• Anna Athanasopoulou
• Henrik Barkman
• Maryline Filippi

Moderator:

• Jacki Davis

Speakers:

• Natasja Paulssen
• Volker Helzle
• Spiros Nikolopoulos
• Michela Magas
• Luca Morena
• Lisa Lang
• Anna Athanasopoulou 
• Rehana Schwinninger-Ladak