Producers and producer responsibility organisations should finance the scaling up of textile recycling, in particular fibre-to-fibre recycling, thereby enabling the recycling of a broader variety of materials and creating a source of raw materials for textile production in the Union. It is also important that producers financially support research and innovation into technological developments in automatic sorting and composition sorting solutions that allow the separation and recycling of mixed materials and the decontamination of the waste to enable high-quality fibre-to-fibre recycling solutions and the uptake of recycled fibre content. To facilitate compliance with this amending Directive, Member States are to ensure that information and assistance are available to economic operators from the textile sector, especially to SMEs, which should take the form of guidance, financial support, access to finance, specialised management and staff training material, or organisational and technical assistance. If such information and assistance are financed through state resources, including when wholly financed by contributions imposed by a public authority and levied on the undertakings concerned, they may constitute State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU. In such cases, Member States are to ensure compliance with State aid rules. The mobilisation of private and public investment in the circularity and decarbonisation of the textile sector are also the focus of several Union funding programmes and roadmaps, such as the Hubs for Circularity instrument and specific calls under Horizon Europe. It is also necessary to further assess the feasibility of setting Union targets for the recycling of textiles to support and drive technological development and the investments into recycling infrastructure as well as the push for ecodesign for recycling.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
