Since 16 October 2025, Directive (EU) 2025/1892 makes clothing brands pay for the clothes Europeans discard, and every Member State must set up a producer responsibility scheme for textiles within 30 months. The open question is whether the fee is the same for every garment or lower for clothes made to last and higher for clothes that fall apart.

On Thursday 5 November 2026, 14:00 to 17:30 CET, TRUSTex puts that question to the people who will answer it, at the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels and on an open livestream. Saskia Bricmont MEP opens the afternoon and Delara Burkhardt MEP closes it. Between them: a short film from one of the world's largest landfills, a testimony on the social cost of textile end of life in the Global South, a young voice from Generation Climate Europe, a panel on where the value chain breaks and who bears the cost today, a panel on what the fee should reward with a scheme that already pays durability bonuses, producers, the Commission and a UK data voice, a civil society view on where the money should land, and a synthesis by the project. Conclusions feed the TRUSTex recommendations to the European Commission due in June 2027.

Co-organised with Generation Climate Europe. Free, registration required.

TRUSTex is funded by the European Union and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.