Can the European Union afford to be the cleanest continent in a dirty world, and can it remain the moral leader of sustainable action if all of its factories disappear?

These were two in a series of rhetorical questions put to delegates at the 63rd Textile Institute conference by Mario Jorge Machado, current president of Euratex, the European textiles federation.

Euratex represents a sector which now has an annual turnover of €170 billion, with around 200,000 countries largely comprising SMEs employing a combined 1.3 million people.

This year’s TI conference took place in Porto, Portugal, from October 7-10, during a year in which the institute is celebrating the 100^th anniversary of its granting of a Royal Charter by King George V in 1925. This transformed it from a professional association into a globally recognised chartered body. In Porto, however, while Europe’s textile legacy was widely acknowledged, the emphasis was very much on the immediate future, and the issues the textile industry currently faces.

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