Brussels, 05/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - The attempts on Monday 5 October by the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU to hold a meeting of the nineteen employment ministers of the eurozone for the first time in Luxembourg did not manage to win everybody over, whether attendees or the nine member states not invited.
The aim of this compact meeting, chaired by Luxembourg's labour minister Nicolas Schmit and Luxembourg's social security minister Romain Schneider, was to discuss how to boost the social dimension in the governance of economic and monetary union (EMU) and assess the value-added of this particular grouping of ministers, nicknamed 'social Eurogroup.'
The idea has won the favour of some, one of the most fervent supporters being France, alongside Italy and Germany, but others made no attempt to hide their reservations or even bitterness. Schmit admitted that the meeting had not been wholly successful, saying at the midday press conference that there had been criticism amongst the applause. The criticism came from all directions. The countries excluded from the process, of course, particularly Denmark, but also Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria, which expressed their disagreements in the form of a letter. They also made their discontent known to Luxembourg, when the Presidency informed them about the social Eurogroup's talks at the start of the formal Council meeting on employment and social policies (EPSCO).
Wishing to avoid upsetting other nations, some delegations said at the nineteen-country meeting that a cautious approach should be taken to avoid setting up a parallel decision-making process that would exclude countries not in the eurozone and that any future such meeting should invite the non-euro countries to attend on a voluntary basis. However, other delegations, such as the Baltic States, particularly Finland, wanted to close the door immediately to the idea of any further such meeting, saying that social polices should be debated by all EU member states and wanting to retain the existing instruments and structures.
In face of such hostility from some parties, Schmit expressed a degree of optimism that his initiative had not been fruitless. He said that although not united over the format, EPSCO ministers from the eurozone had had a fruitful discussion and should repeat the exercise from time to time to give the eurozone back its social dimension that otherwise has not emerged. Responding to his critics, he said that there would never be any attempt to make this type of meeting a decision-making body. Rather than social harmonisation, he said, the aim was social conference and he stressed the need to strike a balance between the social ministers' contributions and those of the Eurogroup finance ministers, failing which there wouldn't be any social dimension to EMU at all. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)