Brussels, 22/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Riding the wave of renewed enthusiasm in relations between the European institutions and the European social partners (see EUROPE 11278), the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU devoted the informal meeting of labour and social affairs ministers in Riga on Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 April to one single topic: social dialogue.
Social dialogue has become the cornerstone of the social dimension of economic and monetary union (EMU). It is meant to involve the social partners in the EU's major policy objectives, such as implementation of the Juncker investment plan, the digital economy, energy union and in European economic governance at all levels of the European semester budgetary process.
This informal Council meeting was, then, structured to cover all these dimensions. The first plenary session was given over to the role of social dialogue in the pursuit of the goals of the EUROPE 2020 strategy and the second was devoted to factors common to member states that make it possible to speak about a European social dialogue model, despite the huge differences in national practices. These factors are mutual confidence, support for the national partners and the desire of the national government to cooperate with them, and the partners' independence of action, summarised Latvian Social Affairs minister Uldis Augulis at the end of the first day.
Representatives of the European social partners, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Parliament also took part in the meeting. Two workshops were organised: one on current and emerging challenges for social dialogue and the other on recent developments and experience in wage setting. As the subjects chosen suggest and as Augulis underlined, the debate on social dialogue is taking place against a precise backdrop, where the impact of a social and financial crisis that rocked Europe are still present. The European Commission, represented by Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis and Commissioner Marianne Thyssen, repeated time and again its intention of engaging in more and better consultation of the social partners. (Jan Kordys)