The Directorate-General for Trade, the Directorate-General for DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology are seeking stakeholders’ inputs and comments on the EU-U.S. cooperation on secure supply chains under the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC).

The statement from the inaugural meeting of the TTC in Pittsburgh on 29 September 2021 indicates that Working Group 3 on Secure Supply Chains is specifically tasked to focus on advancing the EU and U.S. respective supply chain resilience and security of supply in key sectors for the green and digital transition and for securing the protection of our citizens. A first focus will be on clean energy, pharmaceuticals, and critical materials. The EU and the U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to building a partnership on the rebalancing of global supply chains in semiconductors.

On 13 December 2021, the Commission organized a stakeholder event to provide an opportunity for experts from industry, academia and civil society to give their views, discuss the priorities to be pursued and develop concrete proposals for each of the sector-specific strands of the TTC Working Group 3 on Secure Supply Chains.

We are now inviting stakeholders to provide written comments via the Futurium platform by 14 January 2022 for this purpose.  

Guiding questions for inputs

1. What should be the main concrete objectives towards which this working group could work in your sector? More specifically, what concrete problems or issues have you encountered related to supply chain resilience which you believe could be addressed in the TTC Working Group 3 on Secure Supply Chains?
2. What actions would you propose to reach these objectives? For example, how could transparency of supply chains be reinforced? How could the EU and the U.S. cooperate to effectively increase supply chain resilience? 

Practical information

Dates:  Comments/proposals can be submitted until 14 January 2022, COB.

Where/how to submit: Comments are to be submitted via the EU-US Trade and Technology Council Futurium platform for Working Group 3 – Secure Supply Chains. Please submit as a document with the tag ‘WG 3 Consultation 2021’.

Please note that contributions submitted via Futurium will be visible to all Futurium users.

Input format: Please clearly indicate the sector or sectors, (e.g. clean energy, pharmaceutical, critical materials and semiconductors) that are you are focusing on and structure your submission as much as possible in line with the guiding questions above.

Contact for further information:TRADE-D1-REQUEST-BOX@ec.europa.eu