Cluster Italiano della Bioeconomia Circolare SPRING
SPRING
Cluster SPRING, a non-profit association, serves as the Italian Circular Bioeconomy Cluster.
ID: 897024045759-09
Lobbying Activity
Response to Circular Economy Act
27 Oct 2025
The Circular Economy Act must consider the Bioeconomy as one of its main pillars. With the adoption of the new EU Bioeconomy Strategy in 2025, EU aims to radically change the EUs approach to the ways we produce, consume, process, store, recycle and dispose of biological resources. The Circular Economy Act must support the main objectives of the Bioeconomy Strategy: - ensure food and nutrition security; - manage our natural resources sustainably; - reduce the dependence on non-renewable, unsustainable resources; - mitigate and adapt to climate change; - and create jobs across Europe. These objectives are relevant, with a specific focus on the regional deployment of the bioeconomy across Europe and on increasing our understanding of ecological boundaries. The Circular Economy Act must manage to establish the bioeconomy as a cross-cutting policy, going beyond research & innovation. A full recognition of the circular bioeconomy in the frame of the Circular Economy Act must be based on the following key points: - NACE codes for biorefineries, as the U.S. are doing for their classification system. This would help to distinguish and valorize the peculiarity of our sector removing some obstacles that hamper the valorization of secondary raw materials. - Recognize the contribution of bio-based products to the transition into legislative acts, including incentives for bio-based products and / or mandatory bio-based content requirements, promoting European integrated supply chains that are already in place and are driving significant transformations in the production, use and end-of-life. - Promotion of bio-based, biodegradable and compostable products that do not accumulate in soil and water, as well as those that support the collection and treatment of organic waste. This includes the development of adequate infrastructures for the treatment of organic waste and the production of quality compost. - Promotion of the sustainable use of biomass for bioeconomy, setting criteria in line with those contained in the Renewable Energy Directive. - Support the scale-up of existing technologies at industrial level, especially in the recovery of by- and co-products from the different process steps exploiting the synergy with the agricultural sector and leveraging investments. - It is absolutely needed to create synergies between the Circular Economy Act, the EU Biotech Act and the Circular Bioeconomy Regulatory Framework, with the aim to have also the EU Bioeconomy Act.
Read full responseResponse to Towards a Circular, Regenerative and Competitive Bioeconomy
19 Jun 2025
SPRING, the Italian Circular Bioeconomy Cluster, encourage the EU Commission to present an ambitious Bioeconomy Strategy, strengthening the industrial dimension of EUs bioeconomy via a dedicated action plan and a stable and coherent legislation. Indeed, to fully exploit the potential of the EU bioeconomy, the future Strategy should guarantee a legislative framework able to safeguard the European competitiveness in the international market by removing current regulatory barriers that create disproportionate burdens and hamper the development and the growth of European innovative technological solutions in the bioeconomy sector. While increasing its competitiveness, the EU bioeconomy should also seek new models of fair and just international cooperation, implementing win-win strategies with countries that have abundant biomass but lack technological innovation. Implementing technologies in countries where biomass is produced could generate value and jobs in those regions while supplying intermediates to EU bio-based industries. European companies have already made investments in the bioeconomy sector with a view to defossilize products and services, therefore it is important to exploit the full potential of this know-how and protect existing and planned investments, adopting measures in order to support the development of this sector and the market for products and energy obtained from biomass, and not to compromise the European leadership reached in this field. To this aim the Strategy should also facilitate the total or partial reconversion of traditional and non-productive/competitive industrial plants into bioeconomy plants to meet the specific needs of innovative bio-based production value chains (for the production of bioproducts, biochemicals, and biofuels, including chemical and liquefied gases), also in synergy with the agrifood sector, urban ecosystems and waste and residues management. This could be done also by mobilizing public funding, in synergy with other EU policy, for plants reconversion and for the promotion of research and innovation into cutting-edge technologies that meet high sustainability and productivity standards. It is also crucial to map the marginal lands and the dismissed industrial plants that are located in Europe in order to favor their reconversion in new biorefineries. These investments can strengthen EU competitiveness and resilience by creating new jobs, revitalizing the local economy through the integration of local supply chains, promoting the recovery of polluted areas, reducing territorial and landscape degradation. In this frame it is relevant to provide public support to scale-up from lab to pilot and demo and mobilise private investments in Europe through improved access to finance and capital. The Strategy should recognize the decarbonization contribution of sustainable products, materials, chemicals and energy obtained from biomass and the other biological and renewable carbon sources and adopt measures to reduce the price gap between these products and conventional fossil-based products. In order to enhance the contribution of the above mentioned products to the decarbonization of the economy and the reduction of climate-changing emissions, it will therefore be necessary to identify tools to accelerate the substitution of fossil feedstock and to stimulate the demand and market uptake of those products (e.g., tax leverage, financial incentives and GPP criteria, introduction of bio-based content requirements for specific biodegradable and compostable plastics applications).
Read full responseMeeting with Ilaria Flores Martin (Cabinet of Commissioner Jessika Roswall) and Fundación Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía and
13 Jun 2025 · Bioeconomy