COTANCE urges EU to recognize leather as bio-based and circular
COTANCE wants Brussels to count leather as bio-based, circular material. The fight is over definitions, but the stakes reach labels, funding and consumer trust.
COTANCE has asked the European Commission to put leather inside Biotech Act II, not on the margins, arguing that hides and skins belong in Europe’s bio-based economy as an established circular value chain. The move lands as Brussels prepares a broader biotech framework that would stretch beyond health and into industrial biotechnology and biomanufacturing, a shift that will decide which materials are seen as strategic and which are treated as leftovers.
For the leather sector, the case starts with the raw material itself. Hides and skins are unavoidable by-products of meat and dairy production, not crops grown for leather, and around 8 million tonnes of hides and skins are recovered globally each year, COTANCE says. Tanning turns that residual biomass into a durable material. Without that upcycling activity, the material would become waste with heavier environmental consequences. Leather’s durability, repairability and biodegradability fit circular-economy logic.
COTANCE says leather has been overlooked in earlier EU bioeconomy strategies and wants Biotech Act II to treat established bio-based value chains on the same footing as newer technologies, with technology-neutral policy and full life-cycle assessment. In leathercraft, classification shapes the language used on tags, product pages and sustainability claims, and it can decide whether handmade goods are read as a long-life natural material.
The Commission opened its call for evidence on industrial biotechnology and biomanufacturing on 18 May 2026 and closed feedback on 10 June 2026. The European Parliament’s legislative-train briefing puts Biotech Act II later in 2026. Brussels also set out a new bioeconomy strategy on 27 November 2025. It put the EU bioeconomy at up to €2.7 trillion in 2023 and 17.1 million jobs, about 8 percent of EU employment. COTANCE continues lobbying on bioeconomy, circular economy, life-cycle assessment, public procurement and waste rules with industriAll Europe and EU institutions.
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