The Belgian Presidency of the EU Council wants to strengthen Social Europe and the European Pillar of Social Rights, and has expressed its determination to achieve success on the issue of digital platform workers, on Thursday 11 January at an informal meeting of employment and social affairs ministers in Namur.
Although the Member States failed to reach agreement on this issue on 22 December (see EUROPE 13320/14), the Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy and Employment, Pierre-Yves Dermagne respectively, also made it clear that this agreement should not, however, “be reached at any price” and that the “initial ambition” of the Commission’s text presented at the end of 2021 should be maintained.
“We know that the situations (in the Member States) are different; we are going to make a series of contacts with the Member States that are the most reluctant; the desire is to obtain a new mandate to resume negotiations with the European Parliament”, the minister added, saying they were “aware that the timing is particularly tight, it is a question of weeks to reach an agreement”.
The Belgian Presidency of the EU Council convened an initial working group for 16 January and provided the Member States with new ideas for work dated 10 January, which EUROPE will come back to.
In one of these documents, the Presidency acknowledges that it needs to work again on: - the criteria/indicators for triggering the legal presumption of salaried status; - exemption for social security, tax and criminal proceedings; - the discretionary power of the competent national authorities when they consider that a person could be wrongly classified; - the effects of reclassification decisions; - the consequences of no rebuttal or an unsuccessful rebuttal; - the excessively prescriptive nature of the accompanying measures.
It is proposing improvements.
Also present at this informal meeting, the Director General of the International Labour Organization, Gilbert Houngbo, welcomed the work of the European Union and also called for an ambitious directive.
The ILO is looking more and more into algorithmic labour management and is also working on global standards by 2025 or 2026, he told EUROPE, also mentioning a question of tax justice and a level playing field between multinationals.
In addition, the informal meeting in Namur made it possible to record “the consensus of the Member States on the importance of the European Pillar of Social Rights” and the need to keep social progress at the heart of European priorities, including economic governance and competitiveness, said the two ministers.
The ministers and their representatives also discussed, on 11 January, access to social protection and whether the SURE instrument to support short-time work schemes, launched during the pandemic, should be restarted.
This is a subject that is particularly close to the Belgian Presidency, as Deputy Prime Minister responsible for Health and Social Affairs Frank Vandenbroucke confirmed to EUROPE, but which he also acknowledged remains “controversial”, with not all Member States wishing to move towards a permanent European system.
However, the minister does not rule out the possibility of Member States making progress under the Presidency to “align temporary unemployment systems” on common criteria.
For his part, the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, acknowledged that the Commission would no longer be able to propose a new scheme. “It’s too late”, he said, but SURE “has been a great success” and “it’s important to draw all the conclusions from this programme and see how we can better improve the national systems and move towards something more permanent to support transitions on the labour market”.
We must “not give up completely on this idea of a European unemployment insurance system”, said the Commissioner, who is also interested in becoming the Spitzenkandidat of his Socialist political family.
Coordinating social security systems: building on consensus
Asked by EUROPE about the revision of the regulation on the coordination of social security systems (883/2004), Minister Vandenbroucke also pointed out that on this extremely important and complicated dossier, “there is agreement on four chapters and not two” (unemployment and applicable legislation). “Twenty years ago, this issue was already extremely complicated, so the divisions in terms of ideas and material interests are very, very deep”.
The minister therefore stated that it was “a shame not to be able to make progress on the other chapters, because there are very concrete advances on the other four chapters”, such as family allowances and more significant enhanced cooperation on the posting of workers.
He said that he will endeavour to “bring about the progress that is possible, and perhaps it will be necessary to distinguish between the issues on which agreement has already been reached and the other chapters” that are still pending, he added.
The EESC determined to defend European social acquis
Also present at the meeting was the President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Oliver Röpke, who came to defend the expectations of his organisation.
He said that he hopes an agreement will be reached on workers on digital platforms and wants to influence the preparation of the future European Social Agenda, which will be determined at a meeting in La Hulpe in mid-April.
The president welcomed “the consensus on the European Pillar of Social Rights” and insisted on the pursuit of social policies that could also involve the social partners or representatives of civil society at national level.
Also supporting a permanent SURE mechanism and saying he was waiting for a new framework for internships in the EU, Mr Röpke also promised to ardently defend European social acquis during the European election campaign.
The EESC is heavily involved as well in work on how to bring the EU candidate countries’ models into line with those of the Member States.
On Friday 12 January, the informal meeting will welcome representatives from these candidate countries. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)