The EU Ministers for Employment and Social Affairs will be meeting in Brussels on Monday 10 March to discuss the challenges of an ageing population and the ‘silver economy’, as well as to take note of the Joint Employment Report 2025 and the Contribution on the ‘Employment and social aspects of the 2025 Recommendation on the economic policy of the euro area’.
The Council is not expected to make any breakthroughs on the Directive on traineeships or progress on the rules for coordinating social security schemes, an issue for which the Polish Presidency of the EU Council is still trying to determine the way forward. The ministers’ meeting will therefore not be decisive.
Lunch will be devoted to the right to disconnect; for context, the Commission is due to launch a new phase of consultation with the European social partners.
On the ageing of European societies, the Polish Presidency has prepared a note focusing on two issues: “1) What policy incentives does your country use to promote longer working lives? - 2) Do you think that the European Semester already provides sufficient attention to ageing-related challenges and opportunities, or that more attention should be devoted to some of them, and in that case which?”
“Currently, older people are often exposed to a high risk of poverty, while their continued contribution to economy and society is not fully recognised. Underestimation, even discrimination or exclusion, is tarnishing the final years of many older people”, she writes in her preamble.
Although the activity and employment rates of people aged 55 to 64 have risen since 2009, they remain well below those of workers in the first age bracket, particularly for older women.
Activating older people can help mitigate the negative effects of population ageing on the EU workforce and the expected increase in skills and labour shortages, writes the Presidency, according to whom “tailored policies are needed to address the specific barriers to employment that older people face, such as age discrimination in hiring”.
Euro area economic policy for 2025. The ministers will also approve a draft recommendation from the Council of the EU on the economic policy of the euro area, including social and employment aspects. It is organised around three points: competitiveness, resilience and macroeconomic and financial stability.
In terms of competitiveness, this involves, among other things, promoting the professional development and retraining of the workforce as well as quality jobs with a view to increasing productivity, particularly in the context of demographic change, and encouraging a fair ecological and digital transition.
With regard to resilience, this includes facilitating the integration into the labour market of under-represented groups, in particular women, young people, older people, low-skilled workers, people with disabilities and people from migrant backgrounds. The draft recommendation also states that it is appropriate to “facilitate managed legal migration of third country nationals in shortage occupations, in complementarity with fair labour mobility and harnessing labour supply and skills from within the Union”.
Links to the discussion paper on the ‘silver economy’ and the recommendation on economic policy in the euro area: https://aeur.eu/f/fs4 ; https://aeur.eu/f/fs5 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)