Paris gathers 68 participants for the second Seminar of the COTANCE-industriAll project
"A Future for European Leather - Objective 2025"

The second Seminar of the COTANCE-industriAll project “A Future for European Leather” took place on Friday 19 June in Paris (France) hosted by the French Tanners Association (FFTM) in the centrally located Pullman-Montparnasse Conference Centre. This time the focus was on Social and Societal challenges and opportunities looking ahead into the next decade.

Two factors explain that Paris gathered double the number of participants compared to Bucharest; first, the success of the first Seminar on industrial issues held in Bucharest earlier in April, which increased the expectations of the sector for this initiative, and, second, the fact that the seminar was held as the open session of the COTANCE General Assembly Meeting and next to the FFTM Council meeting, which made that virtually all French tanners attended.

Again, representatives of big brands, parent sector associations, think tanks and research and educational organisations joined the representatives of both sides of the industry to this second event where the focus was put on social and societal issues. Trade issues and Environmental issues will follow later in 2015, respectively in October (Portugal) and December (UK).

COTANCE President Jonathan Muirhead and Vice-President Jean-Claude Ricomard opened the encounter welcoming the participants and wishing them fruitful discussions.

COTANCE and IndustriAll-European Trade Union proposed again an outstanding panel of speakers with

-    Mr Xavier Royer, Director of the Textile-Leather-Fashion department of OPCALIA, the French Sector Skills Council member of the European Textile Clothing Leather and Footwear Sector Skills Council;
-    Emmanuelle Butaud-Stubbs, Delegate General of the French Union of Textile Industries and member of the European Economic and Social Committee since 2010;
-    Sylvain Lefebvre, Deputy Secretary General of IndustriAll-European Trade Union notably in charge of horizontal Social Dialogue and of a number of industrial sectors.

The speakers addressed the importance of skills developments for the leather industry and the entire leather value chain (Mr Royer), the fruits of the EU Social Sector Dialogue (Mrs Butaud-Stubbs) and the risks for the Social Dialogue that certain EU policy developments entail (Mr Lefebvre).

A panel discussion with Mrs Butaud-Stubbs, Mr Frank Boehly, President of the Conseil National du Cuir, Mr Dominique Jacomet, General Director of the Institut Français de la Mode and both EU social partners of the leather sector Mr Luc Triangle and Mr Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano provided in the afternoon a wider understanding of the societal challenges that the leather industry is to face in the coming years.

The seminar concluded with a public interview of COTANCE Vice-President Mr Ricomard who is to retire from his sectoral functions and has been a promoter and strong supporter of the European sector social dialogue since its beginning in the turn of the millennium.  

June 2015