Faced with the prospect of a long-lasting and traumatic Covid-19 pandemic, we at CEPS decided to step up our efforts to support the work of EU institutions in the development of an industrial strategy fit for a brighter future. We started to advertise an ambitious work programme in early summer 2020, and officially launched the Task Force ‘Towards a resilient and sustainable post-pandemic recovery’ on 26 November 2020. We created eight working groups tasked with exploring policy recommendations.
The Task Force was a truly multi-stakeholder initiative, and we at CEPS were enriched by the discussions that took place in the different streams. Over the course of a mere two months, between mid-January and mid-March 2021, we managed to host 24 working group meetings (three per working group), plus a number of side events related to trade and the issue of indicators for monitoring progress in the EU industrial strategy. Several stakeholders joined the meetings and due attention was paid to ensuring balance in the debate, with invited external speakers that numbered academics, NGOs and policymakers, including several European Commission representatives from a variety of Directorate Generals.
We have released an executive summary which contains the main findings of those meetings. Part 1 presents general recommendations that emerged from our plenary meeting in November 2020, and from the discussions in the various working groups. Part 2 presents the main recommendations from each of the working groups. An annex at the end of the report contains the names of the participants, speakers, chairs, and rapporteurs of each working group.
Reports dedicated to each working group will be published between June and September 2021 – check the downloads and links button below.
