Brussels, 05/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 5 November, the parliamentary committee on employment and social affairs (EMPL) voted on a proposed resolution on the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which calls for more ambition, but not too much, from the European Commission and the member states for setting in place “a genuine social and employment pillar to be included in the EMU”. The plenary vote is scheduled for November.
A pillar of this kind should include a scoreboard with social and employment indicators - a point on which there are differences of opinion with the Commission and/or the member states (EUROPE 10934). However, the MEPs stress that currently, the plan for these indicators lacks punch and that they should also include additional ones, such as the level of child poverty, assessments of access to health care and the homeless, as well as a “decent work index”. The idea of a “European living wage index”, as initially proposed by the author of this proposed resolution, the president of the EMPL committee, Pervenche Berès (S&D, France), on the other hand, did not survive the amendment process.
However, the question of whether these indicators would be helpful is one which is worthy of being asked, as the Commission has not defined any thresholds or criteria to interpret them. The MEPs, who are well aware of this problem, are therefore calling on the “Council to define the concrete benchmarks applicable to the indicators for employment and social situation, which would form a European social protection pillar”. At the same time, the EMPL committee regrets the fact that the Commission has not made more progress on the idea of stabilisers within the EMU. However, in the process of the amendments, the mobilisation of “automatic” stabilisers and, in particular, a system of European unemployment insurance and the call for a Green Paper on the subject have all been shelved, largely under the impetus of the EPP Group. (JK/transl.fl)