On Tuesday 16 July in Brussels, Belgium, Romania, Slovenia and Spain presented a non-paper on the margins of the first Employment and Social Affairs Council organised under the Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council (see other news), aimed at “ensuring a strong social agenda” for the next European legislature and moving “towards a Europe that moves forward with new rights”.
On her arrival at the Council, Spain’s Minister for Employment, Yolanda Díaz, said that she hoped the Hungarian Presidency would “avoid any reversals after having worked for all these years on a very broad, very ambitious social agenda”, with the Spanish government hoping, for example, to build on the La Hulpe Declaration, signed in April by 25 Member States (not Sweden and Austria), and to “deepen this social agenda and everything that has to do with improving a Europe that must be more social, more feminist and with more rights in this sense”.
In the document signed on Tuesday, the four governments explain that “the next European mandate must be a new period of strong social progress in the European project, building on the achievements of the current mandate. The next five years are an opportunity to reduce inequalities, fight climate change and further improve living and working conditions for all Europeans. Social policies are crucial for a resilient EU”.
The four countries insist above all on the importance of implementing projects already planned or begun during the last legislature, and wish to guard against any backtracking or weakening of ambition.
With regard to specific proposals, they say it is necessary to: - swiftly adopt the proposed package for the quality framework for traineeships, aiming for a high level of protection and effectively combating bogus traineeships; - strengthen the European Labour Authority to prevent the erosion of labour standards and effectively combat fraud and undeclared work; - ensure full transposition of the Minimum Wage Directive with a common reference framework for monitoring wage trends; - guarantee the full implementation of the Social Convergence Framework within an effective European Semester, based on increased capacity to monitor and correct social imbalances; - continue work on social investment.
The EU must also lead on fair green and digital transitions and guarantee workers’ rights by rapidly adopting a Directive on Teleworking and the Right to Disconnect, and by considering a Europe-wide initiative on working time and the use of personal time.
The aim should also be to adopt an EU initiative defining workers’ rights with regard to the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms in the workplace.
“The positive experience gained with SURE [the instrument to support short-time working during the Covid-19 pandemic, editor’s note] could be an example for a new initiative during the new legislature, for instance to ensure that the twin transitions are fair and inclusive and also to preserve employment from economic shocks”.
The aim is also to strengthen democracy at work and social dialogue by, for example, finalising work on European Works Councils.
Link to the document: https://aeur.eu/f/d1k (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)