Project partners review the reporting questionnaire for their new project
European Social and Environmental Report 2020
After their kick-off meeting last February 7, 2019, COTANCE and industriAll-European Trade Union called the project partners on 27 February 2019 for the first Steering Committee meeting of the new Social Dialogue project that aims the drafting of the 2nd European Social and Environmental Report.
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The delegates from ACEXPIEL (ES), AHLI (HU), APPBR (RO), FFTM (FR), UKLF (UK), UNIC (IT) and VDL (DE) met in Brussels at the COTANCE headquarters and, since this first meeting was open to observers, were joined by a representative of BDSZ, the Hungarian trade union.
The main focus of the meeting concerned the review of the questionnaire used in the 2012 exercise, its update and development, as well as the methodology to be adopted for collecting the necessary company data. Indeed, developing a report on the social and environmental performance of an industry is not a simple exercise. Tanneries in Europe are already solicited by other reporting exercises to both public and private stakeholders, that it is important to justify well an additional one and to balance appropriately the extent and depth of the exercise.
COTANCE and industriAll-Europe understand that it is important for the image of Europe’s leather industry to highlight in the Social & Environmental Report 2020 the progress achieved by the sector’s companies since 2012. Markets ask for information on sustainability performance of the leather industry, labour wants to know the kind of industry it is engaging with, tanners like to benchmark their results against overall sector data and media need accurate information for avoiding that fake news take the overhand in the public perception of the leather industry. The 2020 report can become a powerful tool for responding to all these needs. It’s an opportunity for Europe’s leather industry and all project partners are very conscious on transmitting this message to their affiliated companies when confronting them with a questionnaire that will require the collection of some 37 social and 39 environmental parameters.
The project partners took particular care in ensuring the anonymity of the company contributions and decided on a two-tier data aggregation methodology capable of guaranteeing confidentiality.
Project partners agreed to finalise the questionnaire by the end of March so as to allow more time for the apposite data collection.
The next Steering Committee meeting will take place on the 8th of July.