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During last week’s meeting of EU employment and social affairs ministers, Member States presented their national targets to deliver on the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan by 2030. Jointly, they are meant to achieve the three headline targets on employment, skills, and poverty reduction that EU Member States agreed to during the Porto Social Summit in 2021. Let’s dive into what this means for progress towards a more social Europe.

This handy European Commission visual adds up the national targets that Member States have agreed upon and compares them to the EU headline targets for 2030. Jointly, they aim to slightly exceed the employment target of at least 78% of the population aged 20-64 in employment. They remain slightly below the skills target of at least 60% of all adults participating in training every year. Finally, they aim to go just beyond the poverty reduction target of at least 15 million fewer people at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU.

It is good to see that Member States are more or less on board to all achieve the EU targets. This is especially true as the national targets that were jointly meant to meet the previous Europe2020 headline targets on employment and poverty reduction did not, in fact, add up. It is also positive that some – but not all – Member States have set new sub-targets, as suggested in the Action Plan: including targets to reduce the gender employment gap, increase digital skills and the provision of formal early childhood education and care, decrease early school leaving and the share of young people not in education, employment, or training, and to reduce child poverty.

But as usual, the devil’s in the details. First, it is important to keep in mind the ambition and quality of the overall EU targets. The employment target of 78% is roughly as ambitious as the previous one that aimed for an employment rate of 75% (up from 69%) but was not reached and remained somewhat below 72% in 2020 and slightly exceeded 73% in 2021. However, the 2030 target purely looks at employment levels, while ignoring the crucial aspect of the quality of jobs. Member States fell short of achieving the Europe2020 target aiming to lift 20 million people out of poverty and the 2030 target of 15 million fewer people at risk of poverty or social exclusion has remained behind expectations from civil society organisations in the social field. Even though the EU targets aim to achieve “at least” these numbers, Member States have – on average – not gone significantly beyond expectations.

As the overview document available via this press release listing the national targets shows, ambitions of Member States vary strongly. While this makes sense in a context of diverse national starting points, it underlines the strong divergence between them especially in terms of their employment and training situations (where ambitions are more easily comparable due to targets set in percentages).

It is also important to keep in mind that these headline and national targets hide existing gender gaps and the situations of groups in more vulnerable situations: children, young and older people, LGBTI people, people with disabilities and living with rare diseases, people with a migrant background, including undocumented migrants, racial and ethnic minorities such as Roma, and other groups have on average lower rates of participation in employment, education and training and face higher levels of poverty, social exclusion and discrimination.

All of this shows that Europe still has a lot to do to build a truly social Europe that ensures a decent life for all people.