The ministers of the European Union Member States responsible for Employment and Social Affairs and their counterparts responsible for the Economy and Finance discussed how social investment can boost the EU’s productivity and competitiveness and also enable growth gains, Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem summed up on Tuesday 12 March in Brussels.
The ministers cited specific examples of social investment to boost the economy and growth, such as investment in childcare facilities to increase the employment rate, or spending on mental health infrastructure to keep the population healthy and able to work.
The whole point of this discussion is to make the finance ministers aware that these social investments cannot be thought of like any other investments, of which only the accounting effect on public finances should be looked at.
Although the meeting did not result in any concrete progress at this stage, it did provide an opportunity for some participants to reiterate the importance of closely linking the EPSCO and Ecofin work streams of the EU Council in the management of economic governance at European level.
“It’s necessary that we go outside our silos”, added Mr Van Peteghem. In his view, “productivity is a strong driver of competitiveness and we note that average productivity growth has stagnated in the EU over the last decade. Above all, the productivity gap with the United States is widening”.
It will therefore be important, he added, to “focus also on these social investments and reforms to actually close that productivity gap. Therefore, we [...] need to focus more on [...] upskilling, reskilling, and active labour market policies”.
The Belgian Presidency of the Council will now work on measuring “the impact of social investments on economic growth and productivity”.
If “you say that social investment and social reform is not a cost factor but can be a productive factor, you need to make that operational. You need to be able to measure the impact of social investment and social reform on productivity, on growth, on fiscal sustainability”, explained the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Social Affairs, Frank Vandenbroucke.
With the support of “many Member States”, the Belgian Presidency intends to develop voluntary guidelines on how Member States quantitatively measure the impact and performance of social policy.
Social rights pillar in the Strategic Agenda
On Monday 11 March, EU employment and social affairs ministers discussed the central role of the European Pillar of Social Rights (Porto targets) in the future strategic agenda to be adopted by the EU27 in the summer.
Some Member States, such as Spain, have insisted on strengthening social dialogue and combating unemployment with new European instruments such as SURE.
According to France, the EU has responded to labour shortages with the European Year of Skills and a forthcoming action plan (next week). Its French representative called for efforts to be stepped up to help those furthest from employment into work, and to boost employment among young people and older workers.
Countries such as the Netherlands have also called for monitoring of abuses of worker mobility in the EU.
Letter on health and safety in the workplace
Also mentioned on Monday was the letter sent by Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden urging the European Commission to accelerate the process of revising or setting new limit values for exposure to chemical substances in the workplace, in particular by increasing the capacity to prepare scientific opinions on chemical substances.
These priorities should also have a solid place in next EU strategic framework on health and safety at work, according to these countries.
The European Commissioner for Jobs, Nicolas Schmit, said he was “convinced” of the need to keep the issue on the agenda, pointing out that the Commission had recently proposed new limit values for asbestos and lead. He added that “41 chemicals are currently covered, and my departments are working on a new amendment on cobalt”, which is essential to the green transition.
Link to the letter from the fourteen countries: https://aeur.eu/f/b9p (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)