Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to waste

Frank Vandenbroucke 7th February 2023

As a high-level group on social protection and welfare reports today, Belgium’s social-affairs minister advances the next EU social agenda.

EU social agenda,social investment,social protection
Platform workers in Turin: many fall through the welfare safety-net because they are not recognised as employees—in 2021 the public prosecutor’s office in Milan ordered these and two other food-deliverery companies to do so (shutterstock.com)

Covid-19 has taught us two lessons. First, it is easier to fight a pandemic with an inclusive welfare state that provides broad and well-organised access to sickness and unemployment benefits and to short-time working arrangements for all its citizens—regardless of their employment contract or status, the type of job they do or the sector in which they work. How can one tell people they should stay home when infected, if there is no universal system of sickness benefits? How can one curtail social and economic activities—painful but unavoidable given the initial absence of vaccines—without support for those whose jobs and businesses are affected?

Secondly, even well-organised national welfare states reach their limits in the face of such a transnational challenge. European solidarity was key to reinforce national response capacities, with the SURE programme to sustain employment, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the joint procurement of vaccines. The pandemic also exposed structural weaknesses in existing welfare states—gaps in outdated social-protection arrangements which make them less inclusive than they should be. If Europe is to become a true ‘social union’—a supportive environment for its welfare states, well-prepared for the cross-border health threats and emergencies to come—there is still a long way to go.

Strategic moment

This obliges us to think ahead to the next social agenda for the European Union, the next European Commission and the next European Parliament. This is not to dismiss the current commission’s important social agenda, which will require an open mind and hard work by national ministers of social affairs and employment to bring it to a good end by 2024. But that agenda must not stop there.

My government will have a special responsibility in delivering the current social agenda and preparing the next. Belgium holds the presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2024, a strategic moment taking in the last months of the current commission and the elections to the parliament.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

Two reports highlight the challenges to be addressed. That of the High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU, requested by the commissioner for jobs and social rights, Nicolas Schmit, highlights longer-term demographic and labour-market trends and the green and digital transitions. This report, presented today by the former commissioner for employment and social affairs Anna Diamantopoulou, makes a strong and convincing case for a life-course perspective, combining social protection and social investment, if inclusiveness is our goal.

At the end of January, the commission published its report on the implementation of the council recommendation of 2019 on access to social protection. This shows a mixed picture: there is some progress, in part thanks to measures put in place during the pandemic, but many were temporary patches and most member states fail to address some of the gaps in social protection.

Unifying framework

For the EU to be a social union, supporting national welfare states, it must be guided by shared aspirations. That is why the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights was and still is such an important initiative. It should remain our unifying framework for the policies of social protection and social investment whose necessity is underscored by Diamantopoulou’s report. A thorough evaluation of the social pillar’s 20 principles is necessary, if ambitious.

Take principle 12, centre stage in our agenda—access to social protection. Social-security systems still rely too much on traditional schemes, designed for workers with a full-time contract of indefinite duration. They are ill-equipped to protect vulnerable groups. Low- or unskilled employees with standard employment contracts in poor sectors, the bogus (in reality economically dependent) self-employed, ‘flexible’ workers and casuals and platform workers often do not enjoy access to a vast number of social transfers or do so only partially.

Social-protection systems which no longer accommodate a significant part of the workforce have bad consequences—not only for those individuals but also for the functioning of labour markets, the stabilisation capacity of welfare systems and their funding. The 2019 council recommendation, which calls on member states to ensure formal and effective coverage through adequate and transparent social-protection systems—especially for non-standard workers and the self-employed—was an essential positive step.

Reinforcement required

The recommendation does not however carry the force of a directive, there are lacunae in its scope and monitoring of its implementation is problematic. Reinforcement is required.

While the recommendation covers social-security schemes for unemployment, sickness and healthcare, maternity or paternity, accidents at work and occupational diseases, disability and old age, it does not yet extend to short-time working arrangements and temporary unemployment, the significance of which is underscored in Diamantopoulou’s report. Relatedly, a successor to SURE, which has usefully supported national short-time-working and employment-insurance schemes, should be considered.

The recommendation is also silent on how to guarantee access to social protection, whether via universal (publicly funded) or complementary (occupational) schemes. Similarly, discretion is left to member states on whether to apply mandatory or voluntary schemes to the self-employed, which creates legal uncertainty and social-protection gaps. Both issues, however sensitive, need clarification.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

How member states ensure that workers and the self-employed preserve their rights if they switch contractual status remains unclear and should be addressed in a future instrument.The recommendation refers vaguely to preventing poverty and maintaining decent standards of living but a definition which can be operationalised is required.

Access to information and simplification are not monitored under the current recommendation. Discussion is needed on how to improve the transparency of social-security systems, notably for the most vulnerable citizens.

The indicators deployed to monitor effective access to social protection and its adequacy need critical assessment. How the recommendation’s overall implementation will continue to be monitored after the first commission report also urgently requires reconsideration.

Last but not least, the choice of a recommendation as the policy instrument has limited its effectiveness to date. In 2017 the commission legal service provided an opinion that a directive was legally possible and this should be further explored.

The road towards a fully-fledged European social union is still long and winding. A lot remains to do to implement the principles of the social pillar. The Belgian presidency is ready to take up the baton.

Looking to its EU presidency, Belgium has launched a task force, supported by academics and think-tank experts, to prepare a programme contributing to the next commission social agenda. Workshops will be organised to discuss the key priorities. Anyone interested in contributing ideas and proposals should write to Team Frank Vandenbroucke.

Frank Vandenbroucke
Frank Vandenbroucke

Frank Vandenbroucke is deputy prime minister and minister for social affairs and public health in Belgium.

You are here: Home / Society / EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to waste

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Nagorno-Karabakh,European Union,EU,Azerbaijan,Armenia Azerbaijan exploits vacuum on Nagorno-KarabakhGeorge Meneshian
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl
social democracy,nation-state Social democracy versus the nativist rightJan Zielonka

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube