Review of the 2012 European Bioeconomy Strategy
This Staff Working Document provides a review of the European Commission (EC) 2012 Bioeconomy Strategy and Action Plan "Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe". This review does not constitute a formal evaluation as defined by the Commission Better Regulation guidelines and consequently the approach followed differed from established evaluation practices and requirements. The strategy defined the bioeconomy as "the production of renewable biological resources and the conversion of these resources and waste streams into value-added products, such as food, feed, bio-based products as well as bio-energy". The major aim of the strategy, therefore, was "to pave the way to a more innovative, resource efficient and competitive society that reconciles food security with the sustainable use of biotic renewable resources for industrial purposes, while ensuring environmental protection". As a concretisation of this aim, the strategy identifies five objectives to which the strategy and its action plan are to contribute: (1) ensuring food security, (2) managing natural resources sustainably, (3) reducing dependence on non-renewable resources, (4) mitigating and adapting to climate change, and (5) creating jobs and maintaining EU competitiveness. These five objectives were addressed via the strategy's Action Plan that focused on 3 areas of action with a total of 12 actions, subdivided into 54 sub-actions. This review gives an overview of the progress of implementation of the Action Plan and its first results (section 2.1 and Annex 1), its contribution to the five cross-cutting objectives (section 2.2), as well policy coherence (section 2.3). Section 3 provides an analysis of the relevance and the potential contribution of the Bioeconomy to the EU flagship initiatives such as the Circular Economy and the Energy Union. Section 4 "Conclusions" provides an analysis of the overall progress of the strategy and action plan
eBook, English, 2017
Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2017