Social Platform welcomes European Parliament vote on EU2020 Strategy
Social Platform has welcomed the European Parliament’s Resolution on Employment and Social Aspects of the EU2020 Strategy, adopted today [Tuesday, November 25] in Strasbourg.
The Resolution, authored by Marita Ulvskog, acting-Chair of the parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL) committee, criticises the trend favoured by the European Commission and member states of focusing on economic growth and side-lining social priorities. The need to create quality, accessible jobs and to take urgent measures to address the high number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion is highlighted.
The Resolution reflects various recommendations made by Social Platform, including:
- A rebalancing within the strategy of financial and economic priorities with strong social priorities to ensure social policies are enabled; employment and social considerations should be put on a par with macroeconomic ones.
- Current policies are mainly focused on economic growth without acknowledging the need for an inclusive, rights-based and sustainable approach. The Resolution points out how the EU is still far from achieving the employment and poverty targets of the strategy, and calls on member states to translate the EU targets more ambitiously and concretely into national targets and policies.
- Member states should report every year on the progress made towards the achievement of the targets, and the Commission should provide an annual progress report on the implementation of the strategy and all its headline targets.
- As well as welcoming the scoreboard of employment and social indicators and its integration in the European Semester, this scoreboard should be used as an early-warning mechanism in order to develop suitable policies. Social Platform very much hopes to see the EU developing this further by complementing the scoreboard with a system that triggers preventive and corrective actions once the indicators in the scoreboard reach a certain value.
- In addition to social partners, civil society should be consulted in a meaningful way and such consultation has to become a systematic element of the strategy at all stages. To this end, the Commission should put forward the guidelines they promised to develop in the past
Pierre Baussand, Director of Social Platform, said:
“The adoption of this Resolution is timely, as we approach the European Commission’s publication of proposals for the mid-term review of the Europe 2020 Strategy; we hope that the Commission takes the Parliament’s recommendations thoroughly into account. With today’s vote we hope to see a shift in attitude among EU and national decision makers, with a strong commitment to finding an urgent solution for the millions of people living in poverty across the EU. We look forward to working with legislators and stakeholders to take this development further.”
