Brussels, 21/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 21 November, the European Parliament adopted a declaration during the Strasbourg plenary session on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) social dimension and substantially amended it. The EPP and ALDE were perfectly clear when the different attempts were made to obtain a more ambitious approach by the European Council. The latter is due to examine this issue in December.
The risks contained in this declaration, drafted by the president of the employment and social affairs committee, Pervenche Berès (S&D, France), appear to have provoked an uproar at the idea of building a genuine “social pillar as part of the EMU”'. This last expression, however, has disappeared from the text, at the urging of the ALDE, to be replaced by, “strengthening the social aspect of the EMU”. The EPP group had already initiated significant changes to the committee text (EUROPE 10957) but wanted to go even further during the plenary session vote.
In the first paragraph, an amendment was therefore introduced (302 for, 242 against, with 6 abstentions), which clearly defines how the different competencies will be distributed within EMU, “implementation of the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union is subject to the subsidiarity principle and can be best achieved through the best practice method and the peer review method at European level”. Another amendment amends the text on the new social and employment indicators and instead of saying that they are “not sufficient to ensure” they now stipulate that these indicators are “a possible way of ensuring” analysis of the current situation. (JK/trans.fl)