Brussels, 09/03/2015 (Agence Europe) -It was with a rather warm, sometimes even enthusiastic reception that European ministers received the new European Commission approach to the EU's economic governance, in Brussels on Monday 9 March.
The orientation debate on the “employment” and “social policy” sections of the 2015 exercise on the “European Semester” budgetary process formed the main basis of this Council of Ministers meeting. This exercise has now become customary but the exercise on Monday 9 March was quite particular, insofar as it was based on the new approach defined by the Commission presided by Jean-Claude Juncker. This approach is based on three different pillars: investments, structural reforms and budgetary responsibility, which together translate the EU's political priorities. It therefore involves a delicate balancing act between taking action on demand (increasing investment, mainly private) and supply (improving the way the labour markets are working) and cleaning up national level budgets by tackling unemployment, particularly youth and long-term unemployment, inequality and poverty.
Have these goals been appropriately articulated? Have they been adequately reflected in the reports from the member states and the employment policy guidelines that the Commission sent to the member states in February? The answer to these two questions was clearly “yes” for the significant majority of ministers. Many of them appreciated the Commission's emphasis on the need to reform the labour markets to make them more flexible and review training and apprenticeships, so that the skill sets of young people and workers better reflected the needs of businesses. There were also many of them that thanked the Commission for having responded to one of their recurring grievances, namely, that these reports and guidelines were sent out too late in previous years. The current Commission sent them out three months earlier this year.
This general approval of the new approach does not, however, mean, “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. Some countries, especially Slovakia, but also Lithuania, the Netherlands and Belgium said that the “social” aspects and the relationship with the EUROPE 2020 Strategy goals had not been sufficiently included in the European Semester. Italy and Greece appeared to be on the same wavelength and said that they would have liked social concerns to be the main transversal objective in the three pillars in the new approach. Policy promoting gender equality was also mentioned by Sweden and the Czech Republic, which these two countries said had not been sufficiently promoted. (Jan Kordys)