New European Council for Ethical Fashion to promote interinstitutional collaboration between EU and Africa

Recently, at Turin Fashion Week, the European Council for Ethical Fashion was presented, an initiative set out by the European Commission that seeks to bring together the leading European fashion entities to create greater social and ethical awareness within the sector.

Within the framework of this institutional collaboration, which links organisations such as the African Fashion Gate and the European Commission with companies such as Versace and universities and institutes of higher education such as Seville Fashion School (ESSDM), among others, the aim is to forge European projects for educational and business cooperation and support for entrepreneurship in Africa, as Francisco Valderrama, honorary president of the association, shared with FashionUnited.

Turin and Seville have been selected as the headquarters of this collaborative body created between the different partners. The latter, according to them, "provide knowledge" and "raise awareness about the importance of implementing more sustainable systems to address the importance of climate change, working conditions and exploitation in workplaces and manufacturing methods of fabrics, among other concepts," which gives the selected cities the tools to participate in the transformation of the fashion industry in Europe.

Francisco Valderrama is the head of Seville fashion school. He says it will become "the institutional headquarters of a project that was born to promote the new needs that society demands," as per the press release.

This initiative is framed as part of the European Green Deal, the plan presented by the European Commission in December 2019, which has been subsequently expanded this past March 2022 with the Strategy for the EU on textile production to try to ensure that the fashion world meets the objectives of the 2030 Agenda, and in this way defend the preservation of the planet and the protection of the environment.

This article was originally published on FashionUnited.ES and has been translated and edited into English by Veerle Versteeg.