Country-specific recommendations 2015: Is the Commission proposing the right answers to social challenges?
“Many member states face challenges […] which result in high unemloyment and worsening social conditions. Addessing these challenges is what today’s country-specific recommendations are about.” This was said by European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis when presenting this year’s proposals for country-specific recommendations (CSRs) on 13 May. These recommendations are part of the last stage of the European Semester and are supposed to reflect the Commission’s economic and social agenda.
It seems that this year the Commission is taking a different approach, for instance by seriously down-sizing the number of recommendations. This appears to reflect the voices coming from different political corners, calling for a stricter application of the subsidiarity principle. The previous austerity mantra is less present, even though structural reforms are still deemed a necessity, but more space is given to boosting investing; economic investment for growth, that is, not social investment as we would like to see. Social progress seems to be considered once again as a mere derivative of economic priorities and policies that can help to “bring the Europeans back to work”, as mentioned as the first social priority by Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Marianne Thyssen.
Recurrent themes in the recommendations in this sense are the call for shifting taxation away from labour and adapting wages to productivity and competitiveness while not calling really for wages to be adequate, but mentioning for some member states a possible link with in-work poverty. A number of recommendations are formulated on improving education and training, but this is primarily considered a tool for better integration in the labour market. In line with previous years, member states are requested to reconsider public spending on pensions as well as on healthcare, with efficiency as the key word.
A highly questionnable difference with last year is the drastic reduction of recommendations on poverty and social exclusion; while in 2014 the Commission labeled 12 CSRs as such, this year only six member states received such a recommendation. This clearly goes against the ongoing calls of non-governmental organisations in recent years to provide recommendations on fighting poverty and social exclusion to all member states. Even if some are doing better than others, it should still be a key priority for all member states, in line with the objective set under the Europe 2020 strategy.
What has not changed compared to previous years is that again no CSRs have been formulated for Greece and Cyprus, as they are subject of the macro-economic adjustment programmes, which sends the message that these countries are excluded from Europe 2020.
I have the impression that this year’s CSRs are reflecting to some extent the Commission’s proposal for new employment guidelines, even though they have not yet been adopted by the European Council, nor has the European Parliament given its opinion on them.
The Commission claims that there has been a more intensive outreach within the European Semester, in particular to discuss the recommendations with stakeholders such as member states themselves and the social partners. However, we are still missing the strong and meaningful inclusion of civil society in the debates, both at European as well as national, regional and local level.
Several Social Platform members have already reacted to the CSRs and are quite critical, questioning whether they will answer the real social challenges Europe is still facing today. They are also concerned that the recommendations are too disconnected from the Europe 2020 strategy, and particularly its objective to fight poverty and social exclusion.
Read our members’ first reactions to the CSRs:
