- Porto principles eroded: Five years on, the social-rights agenda affirmed at the 2021 summit is being unwound by leaders fixated on deregulation and short-term competitiveness.
- Poverty’s persistence: A fifth of the EU population — millions of them children — remains at risk of poverty or exclusion, and more than one million Europeans are homeless.
- Quality jobs build strength: Genuine competitiveness depends on quality employment, social protection and robust public services, not on stripping standards to match a US-style market.
- Sovereignty needs a social base: A reformed economic framework, with stronger fiscal capacity and public investment, is the only credible foundation for European autonomy from Washington and Beijing.
European leaders have lost their sense of solidarity and ambition. Today, everything is framed in terms of competitiveness and deregulation — scrapping the very rules that have made the European Union a respected regulatory power in the world. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, are guided almost entirely by the interests of big business and financial institutions, at the expense of everyday workers and vulnerable groups. They have forgotten what makes our Union strong: its social market economy. They have forgotten that competitiveness is achieved only through quality jobs, robust social protection and high-grade public services.
The European project was built on the idea of progress, shared prosperity and social cohesion. The European Social Fund was the first financial instrument the Community ever established. For decades, social democratic forces, working alongside trade unions and civil society, have been building a more social Europe — one that empowers and protects those without whom the single market is just empty words: the workers, the people.
We pushed for greater social investment. We developed the Lisbon Strategy, bringing cohesion and competitiveness together. We protected young people through the financial crisis, saved millions of jobs during the pandemic, and introduced minimum-wage legislation to combat in-work poverty and wage dumping. We secured pay transparency to advance gender equality, and we created new safeguards for platform workers at a time when algorithms are turning the world of work upside down.
In 2017, we adopted the European Pillar of Social Rights as an ambitious framework for equality, solidarity and dignity. Five years ago, the Porto Social Summit, convened under the leadership of António Costa, set concrete targets to reduce unemployment, cut poverty and encourage lifelong learning. We have shown that, with courage and leadership, the Union can pass laws for the many and not just the few.
Today, however, that legacy is at risk and the picture is bleak. A fifth of the EU population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion, including millions of children. People face precarious working conditions in the wake of digitalisation, the green transition and successive austerity measures across member states. More than one million Europeans are homeless. This is unacceptable — morally and politically.
We recognise the work being done by social democrats and socialists inside the European Commission, who are pushing back against the dominant deregulation mantra that seeks to turn the Union into a US-style neoliberal frontier. With the Affordable Housing Act, the Quality Jobs Act and the Anti-Poverty Strategy, the situation can be improved.
But this is not enough. As former European Commissioners with responsibility for social rights, we are calling for a fresh impetus for social Europe, reviving the spirit of Porto five years on. With the cost of living and affordability now the number-one concern for citizens, our duty is to answer with concrete solutions. We are calling for a renewed socio-economic steering agenda that meets the challenges of today: the further digitalisation of the economy, the risks confronting European industry and the anxieties of millions of people across the Union.
The major geopolitical disruptions Europe is facing demand a stronger sovereign Union. That sovereignty requires a renewed and reinforced social foundation, with enhanced investment and fiscal capacity, including for public services. A narrow focus on deregulation, on the dilution of European regulatory autonomy and on lower social and environmental standards is not the right way to improve Europe’s competitiveness — at least not the kind that places people and their rights at its heart.
This is how we can build a progressive European development model. No climate transition or digital transformation can happen without a reformed economic policy framework and a sound social foundation. That foundation is the basis for European sovereignty: it affirms a core identity and a set of values, reduces external dependencies and offers a credible alternative to the visions advanced by the United States or China.
In Porto, we showed that it was possible to anchor solidarity at the heart of our political action. It is time to show it again.
