On Monday 19 May, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium held a new lunch-debate in the framework of its ‘Business Circle’ platform, in which the European Commissioner for the Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, Jessika Roswall, spoke on ‘Challenges and opportunities in a Circular Europe’.

After the welcome cocktail, the president of the Chamber, Pablo López-Álvarez, opened the lunch by thanking Commissioner Roswall for her participation in the debate and Francisco Reynés, CEO of Naturgy, for sponsoring the event.

Reynés then spoke, explaining that when Naturgy was born ‘the world was completely different’ and that, after the changes of the last three decades, the energy industry faces ‘the trilemma of decarbonising while maintaining affordable energy prices and without putting supply at risk’.

System change

Commissioner Roswall argued that there are business and economic arguments for circularity. As the circular economy accounts for only around 20% of the total economy, she said that ‘the supply of raw materials is becoming a competition’.

In that sense, he said that ‘the change should be systemic’ and that it should also be the consumers themselves who need to change. In response to those who are ‘frustrated’ that the EU is not changing fast enough, Roswall explained that priority policies of legislative simplification should give a significant boost to circularity objectives.

The presentation was followed by an extensive question and answer session in which topics such as bioeconomy, ethanol and collaboration between different directorates-general were discussed.

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