Objective 2025: the COTANCE-industriAll project

The second seminar of the COTANCE-industriAll project, 'A Future for European Leather', took place in mid-June in Paris and was hosted by the French Tanners Association (FFTM) in the Pullman Montparnasse Conference Centre. This time, following the first seminar in Bucharest in April, the focus was on social and societal challenges and opportunities looking ahead into the next decade.

Two factors explain why the Paris event gathered twice the number of participants than that of Bucharest.

First, it followed on from the success in April, which focused on industrial issues and increased the expectations of the sector for this initiative. 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 meant 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 in Paris to speak about social and societal issues. Based on the momentum of the seminars so far, the October seminar in Portugal on trade issues and the December one in the UK based on environmental issues are poised to increase in popularity and tangible results.

COTANCE president Jonathan Muirhead and vice-president Jean-Claude Ricomard opened the event, and COTANCE and IndustriAll-European Trade Union provided another outstanding panel of speakers, including:

• 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.

Royer addressed the importance of skills development for the leather industry and the entire leather value chain, while Butaud-Stubbs examined the fruits of the EU social sector dialogue. The risks for the social dialogue that certain EU policy developments entail was covered by Lefebvre.

Talk and action

An afternoon panel discussion with Butaud-Stubbs; Frank Boehly, president of the Conseil National du Cuir; Dominique Jacomet, general director of the Institut Français de la Mode; and EU social partners of the leather sector Luc Triangle and Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano provided 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 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 inception at the turn of the millennium.