Fossil Industry Committee

Now more than ever, we want to make a positive impact with our teaching, research and engagement. To find out how our sustainability ambitions affect your work and EUR’s partnerships, we have set up the expert Fossil Industry Committee. On this page, you will find all the information about the committee and – at a later stage – guidelines to make informed choices for partnerships with the fossil industry.

“And then, a commission was born!” 

After recognising the climate and environmental emergency in 2023, we adopted more ambitious sustainability targets. The Executive Board decreed that partner organisations – both academic and non-academic – had to have a credible and feasible ‘divesting in fossil’ policy to be eligible for a partnership. From this idea, the Fossil Industry Committee was born.

A committee of experts

The aim of the expert Fossil Industry Committee is to write guidelines for partnerships that have a significant impact on the climate and ecosystems. Once these guidelines have been developed, they will have to be implemented at EUR. This will allow us to build on the results of the sustainability dialogues and the conversations with our dialogue partners. The committee consists of eight members, all chosen on the basis of their individual expertise.

Composition of the committee

Committee members do not represent specific interest groups, but sit in a personal capacity. The different disciplinary backgrounds and knowledge of the committee members guarantee a balanced advice to the Executive Board, in which different perspectives come together. The committee strives for consensus in its opinions.

The process

The expert members of the committee will meet in several sessions. During these sessions, they will work with each other to come up with a draft version of the guidelines. Between October and December 2024, this version will be coordinated internally with EUR’s administrative bodies and other internal stakeholders. In this way, we will arrive at a broadly supported document. The committee aims to present its findings to the wider EUR community in January 2025.