Brussels, 09/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Informal Social Council on 6 and 7 July in Liege allowed to have an initial debate over the indicators for quality of employment, to prepare the "Social Summit on 13 December, to have a first true debate over the future of pensions and to underline the value of developing a European social mediation system, a subject that is especially dear to Laurette Onkelinx, who co-chaired the session with her colleague Frank Vandenbroucke, in the presence of representatives from European social partners for the Troika on Friday afternoon. Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou took part in these works, and Michel Rocard, President of the European Parliament Social Affairs Committee, throughout the whole meeting. Among the numerous absent Ministers was the French Elisabeth Guigou (who had brought her support to the concerns of the Belgian Presidency in favour of a more social Europe).
The debate was very rich and enriching, stated Laurette Onkelinx on Saturday following the works, by raising the following themes:
European social mediation: idea to create at the European level an independent European social mediators body, chosen voluntarily by the employers and the employee representatives in order to facilitate the social dialogue in case of restructuring or conflicts within large European companies, received the assent of all the parties, including Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou, but still requires an in-depth examination. Also support from Michel Rocard who underlined that the European social mediator must play the role of mediator and not of arbiter. Mrs Onkelinx will now go to each of the EU capital to concretise this idea.
Quality of employment: the Presidency obtained a mandate to progress in a very concrete manner in the definition of a group of indicators allowing to regularly assess the progress achieved by the Member States and to try and finish before the Laeken summit. All the delegations welcomed the Commission Communication (see EUROPE of 21 June, p.11) and Mrs Onkelinx added that everybody was in agreement not to add new processes to those that already exist. The notion of quality of employment will thus be integrated into the existing process and it must be present in the guidelines for 2002, she said. The delegation also insisted on the comparability of the indicators and the reliability of the statistics, and they proposed to produce a summary report for the spring summit. Mrs Onkelinx also asserted that the Laeken declaration must clearly put across the role of European social dialogue in the new institutional organisation of Europe.
With regards to the future of retirements and pensions, the EU 15 debated with prudence, for the first time at the European level, this sensitive issue, commented Frank Vandenbroucke. Following the Gothenburg mandate, the Council should, according to the method of open coordination and, on the basis of a joint report from the Social protection committee and the Economic policy committee, establish for the Laeken Summit a report on the state of advancement of works and for the 2002 spring summit a true report, a first containing guidelines in terms of health care and care for the elderly, a draft timetable qualified as "ambitious", but which caused a warning from most Member States, which called for not jumping the gun, to do good work on the common objectives and on the indicators. This lead to the following comments from the Belgian Minister: a timetable may be useful to better structure the debates… Finally Vandenbroucke noted that the Member States feel that the pension systems remain their strictly of the national competence, the principal of solidarity being in full effect and that they do not aim to harmonise the pensions systems, which widely vary from country to country and which are financed differently.