"We represent 42 pan-European social NGO networks, and find that the overview of the responses to the EU2020 consultation totally mischaracterises the position of our sector. It claims that we 'broadly support the Commission’s proposed priorities', yet our response to the consultation explicitly said the opposite: that the proposed text represented a step back for social cohesion and social inclusion in Europe.

Indeed, this overview paper even contradicts itself – how could social NGOs 'broadly support' a text while considering it to have a 'weak, if not absent' social dimension as the paper states?

In our response to the consultation, we called for strategies to reduce social exclusion and inequality, implement the EU Charter on fundamental rights, and to strengthen the economic framework to develop public services. We explained clearly how these proposals could, and why they should, be implemented. Yet although the overview paper purports to summarise our proposals, it makes no mention of these key priorities of social NGOs.

The overview paper is clearly an attempt to gloss over the positions of stakeholders that contradict the Commission’s view, presumably to influence the outcome of the Informal European Council on February 11. We will therefore be writing to EU heads of state on this issue, and calling on President Van Rompuy and the European Parliament to organise their own consultations with civil society, in order to hear what citizens have to say in these vital discussions on the overarching EU strategy for the next decade."

Several of our members also reacted separately to the Commission's overview document:

• EAPN: “A very partial assessment!”
• AGE: “AGE questions Commission first overview of responses to Europe 2020 public consultation”
• COFACE: “Did the main message from social NGOs get lost in translation?”

• MHE: “Mental Health Europe calls on EU leaders to take social NGOs’ claims for the EU 2020 Strategy into serious account”