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On October 1, Commissioner-designate for Employment and Social Affairs, Marianne Thyssen was interrogated by members of the Employment Committee at her European Parliament hearing. We followed the hearing and registered in particular the following statements and questions.

In her introductory speech Ms Thyssen recalled the unacceptably high numbers of people being unemployed and people living in poverty. Therefore, she committed herself to fight for more jobs, for better social protection and against poverty and social exclusion, in line with the Europe 2020 Strategy. She considers it as her job to make sure that the social impact of future measures is taken into account and that there is an ex-ante coordination.

She pointed out her four priorities for the next five years: creation of employment, access to employment and activation, developing the competence of workers through skills, and effective and efficient social protection to fight poverty. The common social objective of the EU is people, their health and their well-being.

Asked about the social indicators to be used in the European Semester, she consideres they are currently too weak and need to be given more weight. She wants to bring them to the same level as the indicators of the Macro-economic Imbalance Procedure. This should translate also into the Country-specific Recommendations put forward every year.

A question was also asked about how the Commissioner-designate would procede on minimum income and minimum wage, in line with our position of having adequate income and wages in all member states. Ms Thyssen clearly stated that if it was up to her, minimum income and minimum wages would be in place in all member states. However, because of a lack of legislative competence, she considers it is only possible to encourage member states, for example through the Country-specific Recommendations (CSRs).

We also noted Ms Thyssen committing to see more CSRs on poverty, to keep the Maternity Leave Directive on the table and to ensuring the TTIP would not harm social standards. She mentioned the importance of social dialogue and hope that she will also be open to civil dialogue and cooperation with social NGOs.

Check out #Thyssen for Social Platform's and others' tweets on the hearing.