The ministers of the Member States of the European Union will discuss the issue of employment once the Covid-19 pandemic has been overcome, in a long videoconference on Monday 22 February.
The meeting will be the last one before the presentation of the action plan on the European Pillar of Social Rights (see EUROPE 12649/26) and will contribute to the preparation of the Porto Social Summit scheduled for early May (see EUROPE 12616/19). Three sessions will be held in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The first session will be dedicated to the issue of post-pandemic employment. The Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council will seek to determine the projections of employment rates among Member States and the EU’s levels of ambition for the coming decade. It will also seek to establish how Member States and the social partners could most effectively support the employment rate.
The second will focus on developing the skills needed to support economic recovery. Here, the Presidency will reflect with the ministers on how Europe can contribute to increasing the participation rate of adults in education and training programmes.
As such, ministers will be invited to give their views on the use of the new European financial instruments available, notably the Recovery and Resilience Facility (see EUROPE 12659/6), the budgetary instrument at the heart of the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan, and the European Social Fund Plus (see EUROPE 12647/15), to support the acquisition of new skills.
The third session will be dedicated to the fight against poverty and social exclusion. The Portuguese Presidency will ask Member States to detail the weaknesses of their national social protection systems revealed by the pandemic. Finally, on the same theme, it will try to design the outlines of a collective commitment to reduce poverty in the European Union.
Gender equality. On Monday afternoon, a fourth session will be held on the theme of gender equality as a driver for recovery. The Presidency will survey Member States on how measures in the context of recovery should be designed to specifically address the impact of the pandemic on women’s employment.
The Portuguese authorities will try to identify the forms of social protection to be developed in the long term to respond to gender discrimination, paying particular attention to single-parent families, a phenomenon that primarily concerns women.
Finally, the Presidency of the EU Council will seek to identify policies to increase the presence of women in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in the digital sector. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)