Brussels, 25/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - Given that the social objectives in the EUROPE 2020 Strategy are in danger of not being attained, it is the very credibility of the strategy itself that is at stake. This opinion was shared by the majority of those intervening during a European Parliament plenary session debate on Tuesday 25 November. One possible solution mentioned was to make the social objectives binding, so that they are not “worthless figures”, according to the expression used by Marian Harkin MEP (ALDE, Ireland).
The EUROPE 2020 Strategy contains two social objectives: ensuring a job for 75% of the active population in the EU and making sure that the number of people affected or threatened by poverty and social exclusion is reduced by 20 million units. These two objectives are not going to be attained (EUROPE 11125). Marita Ulvskog MEP (S&D, Sweden) launched a plenary session discussion on behalf of the employment and social affairs committee (EMPL) on the subject of, “employment and social aspects in EUROPE 2020 Strategy”, on Tuesday 25 November. She drew up a gloomy balance sheet regarding the situation and referred to rising poverty, leaking safety nets, increasing inequality, record unemployment and mass job insecurity.
What kind of solution should the EU put forward? At a Council of Ministers level, the situation is clear: there is no question of modifying this strategy (EUROPE 11178). No one has mentioned this idea at the European Parliament but everyone agrees on the fact that something must be done and in this connection, two possibilities were discussed.
On one level, there are great expectations about what the European Commission will present on Wednesday 26 November, as part of its €300 billion investment plan. Commissioner Marianne Thyssen (Employment, Social Affairs, Professional Skills and Mobility) attended the debate but did not even provide the slightest details about it, even though she implicitly provided assurances that this plan would in one way or another contribute to the continuation of the EUROPE 2020 Strategy. Ulvskog said that they should not forget investment in training, education, women's participation in the labour market, childcare, the integration and inclusion of vulnerable people and the fight against youth unemployment.
On another level, European economic governance was also suggested as a possible way of strengthening the social objectives in this strategy. The Italian Secretary of State for European Affairs, Sandro Gozi, would therefore like the different Council of the EU groupings to be more open, especially the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) and the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO), particularly as a means to break this “imbalance” between, on the one hand, the coordination of social policies and, on the other, macro-economic governance. The same vein was adopted by David Casa MEP (EPP, Malta), who called for the social objectives to be taken more seriously. It was, however, the MEPs Jutta Steinruck (S&D, Germany) and Marian Harkin (ALDE Ireland) who made an unambiguous call for optimum progress to be made on this point: that the social objectives become binding, similarly to the economic and budgetary policy objectives in the Stability and Growth Pact. (JK)