The EU ministers for employment and social affairs, meeting in Brussels on 11 March, will attempt to reach agreement on the directive on platform workers, despite the fact that the permanent representatives of the Member States were still unable to find a solution on Friday 8 March (see related article).
On Monday 11 March, the ministers will also hold a policy debate on the implementation of the European pillar of social rights in the context of the 2024 European Semester and the future social agenda. On the same day, they will also officially adopt the Joint Employment Report 2024 and the conclusions concerning the annual sustainable growth survey and the Joint Employment Report for 2024.
In this context, they will approve the opinions of the Employment Committee and the Social Protection Committee on the Union’s future political priorities concerning the European pillar of social rights.
In this opinion, the Committees recall that, “since 2017, the Pillar has been the EU policy framework to provide common orientations to Member States on how to shape policy actions and legislation at national level, translating social rights into reality and ensuring a level playing field across the Union. Reflecting its comprehensive nature, numerous EU initiatives have been agreed upon since the proclamation of the Pillar”.
In recent years, the implementation of the pillar has been challenged by a series of unprecedented crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the repercussions of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the emergence of high inflation. Despite this, in spring 2023, the EU employment rate reached a record level of 75.4% (70.2% for women and 80.5% for men), unemployment fell to 6% (6.3% for women and 5.7% for men) and the proportion of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion remained broadly stable between 2019 and 2022 (21.6% in 2022).
In this context, “emergency instruments agreed at Union level such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the European instrument for temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) supported Member States in implementing the Pillar principles via concrete labour market and social policy measures to rapidly recover”, the opinion points out.
According to the RRF scoreboard, on average, Member States have allocated around 28% of funds to supporting social objectives. SURE provided support to 19 Member States until December 2022, in particular by encouraging the introduction of extensive and ambitious short-time work schemes or similar measures at national level. It covered around 31.5 million people in 2020, 9 million in 2021 and 350,000 in 2022.
“Looking forward, progressing on the implementation of the Pillar should remain a key priority for the Union and the current and future Member States, as its principles continue to represent the cornerstones to navigate economic and societal megatrends, shape related policies, promote upward social convergence in the Union - in particular with a further EU enlargement on the horizon - and support progress towards the 2030 EU and national targets”, summarises the document.
Joint meeting with the ministers for economic and financial affairs
On Tuesday 12 March, the EU employment and social affairs ministers will also meet their economic and finance counterparts for a policy debate on “social investment” and “reforms for resilient economies”.
In particular, the note stresses the need to “invest in people to boost productivity and growth prospects”.
The EU is “dealing with a considerable competitiveness challenge, not just in how we compete globally, but also in strengthening our internal market. While productivity is the main driver of competitiveness and growth, average productivity growth has stagnated in the EU over the last decade, alongside persisting challenges in terms of cost of living”.
Despite these generally positive results, “labour markets are facing historically high labour and skills shortages. Such shortages constitute bottlenecks to the productivity and growth potential, as well as to the green and digital transformation of the economy”, adds the note.
The ministers will discuss the added value of social investment and the role of the EPSCO Council channel in the governance of the ‘European Semester’ budgetary process.
Social investment is “defined as public spending related to investments and reforms that, on top of pursuing social objectives, are expected to produce returns in terms of economic growth through their impact on human capital and productivity, including via stronger innovative capacity and absorption of new technologies, and/or labour supply. The qualification of social spending as investment is done therefore based on its growth impact. In so doing, the objective is to identify those social measures that directly contribute to economic growth”.
Links to the adopted reports and discussion notes: https://aeur.eu/f/b7g ; https://aeur.eu/f/b7h ; https://aeur.eu/f/b7i (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)