On Wednesday 5 March, the Commission and the European cross-industry social partners signed a new ‘Pact of European Social Dialogue’, which will strengthen the role of the social partners in the development of labour market, employment and social affairs policies, the Commission said in a press release.
The new Pact addresses the main challenges facing European economies and builds on the Val Duchesse Social Partners Declaration of 2024 (see EUROPE 13340/19).
The signatories are the European Trade Union Confederation, BusinessEurope, SGIEurope and SMEUnited.
“Social dialogue is an important feature of our European social model and needs to contribute to ensuring the competitiveness of European businesses, higher productivity and quality jobs in order to maintain good standards of living. Social dialogue remains an essential tool for ensuring that labour markets adapt to the digital and climate transitions and that workers are equipped with the right skills”, commented the Commission.
The new Pact establishes a long-term framework with concrete actions to be undertaken by the Commission and the social partners to strengthen and broaden the scope of the social dialogue and promote greater consultation of the social partners. In particular, the Commission will appoint a European Social Dialogue Envoy who will “promote timely and meaningful consultation of social partners (...) and channel concerns about social dialogue at national level (...) to the EU institutions”; in 2025, it will work with the social partners to establish a ‘Quality Jobs Roadmap’ and exchange views with them on their priorities for the Commission’s work programme for the following year, prior to its adoption.
It also undertakes to consult the social partners on policy initiatives which do not fall under the scope of Articles 153 and 154 of the TFEU (Article 154 provides for two-stage consultation of the European social partners on a range of social policy issues set out in Article 153 of the Treaty, such as working conditions and health and safety at work).
The European cross-industry social partners, for their part, will regularly prepare a multi-annual work programme to address the main economic and social challenges facing European labour markets, and will identify the appropriate instruments to meet these challenges. They will have to improve their autonomous bipartite social dialogue, including the negotiation of agreements between social partners.
Link to the Pact: https://aeur.eu/f/fqz (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)