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On 13 March the European Commission released the Social Fairness Package, a set of measures to deliver on the European Pillar of Social Rights.

The package includes a legislative proposal for the establishment of a European Labour Authority and an initiative to ensure access to social protection for all workers, including self-employed people. A Communication on the monitoring of the implementation of Pillar – which will be closely linked to the European Semester – completes the package.

The two proposals put forward by the Commission are an important step forward in the promotion of social rights at EU level and have the potential to bring positive change to the lives of millions of people across the continent.

Our social protection systems were envisaged at a time in which open-ended full-time working relationships were the norm. Technological changes, ageing and evolving lifestyles, globalisation and deregulation of labour markets dramatically changed the situation. Today only 60% of the workforce in the EU is in permanent full-time employment. This has created fragmentation and discrimination in our societies, with an increasing number of “atypical” workers with no or partial access to basic social protection schemes (unemployment, sickness and health care benefits, maternity and equivalent paternity benefits, invalidity benefits, pensions and benefits in case of accidents at work or work-related diseases). The initiative on access to social protection presented by the Commission aims at ensuring access to social rights for all workers, regardless of their employment status.

Access to and enjoyment of rights is in some instances prevented by illegal actions, such as fraud and abuse, and due to stigma, discrimination and lack of support, including insufficient access to information. The announced European Labour Authority – which aims at facilitating access for individuals and employers to information on their rights and obligations, supporting cooperation between Member States and mediating and facilitating solutions in cases of cross-border disputes – has the potential to improve the enforcement of social rights.

As Social Platform we have decided to focus our attention and energies on social protection. There are two main reasons for this: the initiative has a wider scope – it addresses all EU citizens in all EU Member States, while many of the activities of the European Labour Authority would focus on mobile citizens and cross-border realities – and it targets workers in vulnerable situations.

Before the initiative was officially presented, we contributed to the Commission’s thinking, putting forward together with members our own recommendations.

We are glad to see that many of our points were taken on board. For example, the initiative recommends mandatory protection schemes to ensure both formal and effective coverage and promote transparency and transferability of rights for all workers. It also includes a full provision on adequacy, which encourages Member States to guarantee adequate levels of protection, defined as “sufficient and timely to uphold the standard of living, provide appropriate income replacement, while always preventing […beneficiaries] from falling into poverty”. This is an important advocacy success of all of us, since no provisions concerning adequacy were originally foreseen in the proposals.

Certainly, we cannot deny some disappointment concerning the instrument chosen by the Commission. We called for an ambitious initiative in the shape of a framework directive; what has been put forward is instead a non-binding proposal for a Council Recommendation.

All in all, this initiative is an important development that has the potential to bring about positive change for millions of workers in Europe, as long as its content is not watered down during negotiations and its implementation is pursued and monitored with the necessary ambition by both the Commission and Member States.

Together with members and partners we’ll continue to work in this direction in the coming months.