Real change happens in open and honest conversations. That was the objective behind our workshop on Sustainable Manufacturing at ERF 2026 in Norway.
The goal was simple but ambitious – to bring stakeholders together from policy, research and innovation, robotics, and manufacturing to co-create strategic directions that could shape Europe’s sustainable manufacturing future. Not just celebrate alignment, but to surface the difference in views that matter.
Our keynote speaker Cecile Huet, Head of Unit at the AI Office of the European Commission, set the policy context with clarity and conviction.
Cecile outlined EU priorities supporting sustainable manufacturing and highlighted how #AI and #robotics are central to achieving both sustainability and competitiveness.
Apply AI Strategy
“The Apply AI Strategy is fostering the deployment of AI technology — including robotics — in key industrial sectors and the public sector, ensuring that activities and actions are truly targeted and responding to the needs of end users. This way we can genuinely help drive the uptake of AI by understanding real problems and challenges, and addressing them through our actions.”
An important perspective was also raised by our project coordinator Ahmed Nabil Belbachir(NORCE Research), who emphasised that Europe needs to think of ecosystems — referring to retaining companies and their ecosystems within Europe to be globally competitive.
This set the stage for what followed — and what followed was honest.
In the interactive session, 3 groups of mixed stakeholders worked through the workshop’s core questions.
Three consistent themes emerged:
➡️Policy is not keeping pace with industry needs.
➡️Speed and prioritisation are critical. Europe’s sustainable manufacturing agenda is weakened by too many competing targets and insufficient prioritisation.
➡️ Incentives and regulations need to be binding and actionable. The groups called for concrete mechanisms — reduced bureaucracy, clearer subsidies, government funding, and binding EU regulations rather than guidelines.
A detailed document with the full strategic directions co-created by the three groups will be published shortly.
Thanks to the iBot4CRMs consortium, the workshop coordination group (Franziska Kirstein Oswald Adrian Bratu, MA MBA Assia Belbachir Abhimanyu Chakravorty) our speakers (Damien Sallé Dipl. Ing. Christian Wögerer MAS, MSc Fotios Konstantinidis), Hedi Karray for joining our workshop, and most importantly the audience, for a lively discussion on the future of sustainable manufacturing in Europe. Thanks also to Antonio M. Ortiz Marcelo Petry Nesibe Sibel Akbulut Hayatullah Nory European Robotics Forum 2026 euRobotics aisbl ISWA International Solid Waste Association EDIH AI5innovation KIRAMET
We will be releasing more videos and content in our LinkedIn Page in the next few days. Watch this space!