European textiles leaders debate future of industry
31/03/2015
Paolo Canonico, President of the Technology Platform, said: “Few people would have predicted this incredible transformation of our sector back in 2004, the year when the Textile ETP was launched and incidentally also the year when the last textile import quotas were phased out. While it is true that we lost many companies and industry jobs in the following 5-year period, the companies that have successfully navigated this phase are more competitive and resilient than before. While holding on to the majority of its turnover, the industry has increased its productivity by almost 50 % and extra-EU exports have risen by one third to over €42 billion during the last 10 years.”
Clara de la Torre, director for Key Enabling Technologies in the European Commission, highlighted the participation of the textile and clothing sector in EU programmes in the past 10 years. She admitted difficulties in the start-up of HORIZON 2020 mainly due to the massive oversubscription of the funding calls and invited the Technology Platform to help finding better ways of funding research that will lead to economic growth and job creation in Europe.
Dominique Adolphe and Braz Costa, presidents of AUTEX (Textile Universities Association) and Textranet (European Network of Textile Research and Technology Organisations) respectively, stressed the important role of the academic and applied textile research institutions to ensure that the technologies for industrial breakthroughs for the next 10 years are explored, developed and successfully transferred to industry. They both confirmed that since the launch of the Textile ETP, collaboration between industry and the textile research community has become closer and more constructive, confirming Europe as the world’s “capital of textile technology”.
Closing the conference, Lutz Walter, Secretary General of the Technology Platform, provided a glimpse onto the changing environment in which the Textile ETP will operate in its second decade. While he sees exciting technology and market opportunities and an innovative and resilient industry to grasp them, he was less sanguine about the current EU support opportunities. He vowed to address the current shortcomings of HORIZON 2020 with EU policy makers. He also suggested to better exploit the platform to identify and connected highly specific textile expertise across Europe towards a smart textile specialisation and to develop the Textile ETP into a think tank bringing the best textile minds in Europe together in a common forum.
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