The EU’s employment and social affairs ministers will meet in the evening of Wednesday 3 May and on Thursday 4 May in Stockholm for an informal meeting on Thursday morning to discuss the ‘skills and jobs mismatch’ in times of transition and how to deal with these gaps.
This will be based on a study prepared by the Eurofound Foundation listing the challenges in the EU27 labour markets.
The second session on Thursday afternoon will be devoted to strengthening social protection in an ageing Europe. On this occasion, the ministers will again discuss the High-Level Group’s report on social protection in the EU, published in February.
The aim of the session “is to facilitate an exchange of experience and views on measures that have been taken, or are planned, by the Member States in response to demographic challenges, and how to harness the opportunities to enable adequate and sustainable social protection”, says the Swedish Presidency on its website.
The Commission will present its report on the implementation of the EU Council recommendation on access to social security for the self-employed.
Published on 31 January, it gives a mixed assessment of efforts to implement the recommendation, 3 years after its adoption by the Council.
The level of ambition of Member States in implementing the recommendation varies considerably, writes the Commission.
“Since 2019, 15 Member States have undertaken or planned important reforms to improve participation in social protection schemes for specific categories [such as] self-employed people or people in non-standard forms of contracts. However, significant numbers of them are likely to continue lacking formal access”.
In the dozen Member States that reported data, at least 5.6 million atypical workers and 15.3 million self-employed people do not have access to unemployment benefits.
According to the report, in 2021, almost 40% of employed people in the EU (77 million people) were in non-standard employment (temporary, part-time and/or self-employment) and many of these people faced significant disparities in social protection.
“In 2022, in 17 Member States at least one group of non-standard workers faces formal gaps in at least one of the relevant social protection branches. And self-employed workers are not fully protected in 19 Member States”.
However, the informal meeting will not address ongoing legislative matters, such as the directive on digital platform workers, although some sources had thought that this meeting could serve as a framework for a new exchange on this issue (see EUROPE 13169/24).
Link to the report on the social protection of the self-employed: https://aeur.eu/f/6mx
Link to the report of the High-Level Group on social protection: https://aeur.eu/f/6my
Link to Eurofound: https://aeur.eu/f/6mz (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)