The Presidium of the European Landscape Contractors Association (ELCA) has approved the annual plan 2025. Under the motto ‘Upscaling our benefits and visibility’, there will be numerous activities on the agenda next year.

ELCA has 23 national members in Europe and associate members in Canada, Singapore and United Kingdom. By the involvement of active companies, there is also representation in Japan, Lithuania and Türkiye. One of ELCA’s main activities is to represent the landscape and gardening sector at the European institutions in Brussels. The new European Commission will launch different legislative initiatives in 2025. President of the Commission Mrs Ursula von de Leyen has already published the focus points in the political guidelines for the semester 2024 – 2029. ELCA has analysed these guidelines and found many interesting ideas. Together with the SoGreen Alliance (www.onthegreenmove.com) and our partners in the EU stakeholders network, ELCA will pro-actively join debates and bring in opinions on behalf of our members regarding the best interests of our sector. ELCA is delighted to be appointed by the European Commission as expert in the sub-group of the Nature Restoration Regulation, which is important for greening the urban area. Besides that, ELCA has recently expanded its network with the partnership at the New European Bauhaus and membership at SME United. By cooperating with SME United, ELCA can also make a stronger voice on topics related to entrepreneurship in small and medium sized companies in our sector.

Committee of Firms

The ELCA Committee of Firms (CoF) is an ever growing platform and contains a network now of nearly 200 landscape garden companies. The CoF offers them opportunities to exchange knowledge and experiences in managing a company, get inspired by innovative projects and to make use of concrete ELCA-tools. In 2025 the CoF will have professional excursions to Estonia (Spring) and Finland (Autumn), where the state of the art in landscape gardening in these countries will be shown. In January, February, November and December there will be one-hour online inspiration sessions in which a speaker gives an introduction on an interesting project or actual theme. There is also an online community in development, facilitated in GlueUp, where members can interact directly with each other. This community will be launched at the beginning of 2025. To present the benefits of CoF-membership and to meet (potential) members in person, ELCA takes next year part in common presentations of the national and associate members at relevant events and trade fairs.

Exchange

ELCA facilitates the exchange of students and workers for traineeships and learning on the job. The aim in 2025 is to link this exchange more to our platform of the Committee of Firms and make the number of exchange participants grow. Furthermore ELCA will continue with the training program for CoF-members called ‘What is the secret of a competitive, developing and sustainable landscaping company?’. This training, which pays attention to amongst others the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, is already successfully done in Latvia and open to all ELCA-members.

To present all activities and to remain in contact, ELCA offers information via its divers media. There is permanent information on our website (www.elca.info), frequent news in our social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram) and news in our monthly digital newsletter. The ELCA-office, based in the heart of the political centre of Brussels and managed by Secretary-General Egbert Roozen, takes care for the realization of the actions in this annual plan 2025. If there might be questions or you like to know more: mail to contact@elca.info.