The European Social Charter has long been treated as second-fiddle when it comes to protection of human rights in Europe, with the primary focus being on the other key instrument of the Council of Europe in the arena of civil and political rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and, latterly, the (not-legally-binding) European Pillar of Social Rights promulgated by the European Union in 2017.
But the charter does embed a range of social rights, related to employment and working conditions, housing, education, health, medical assistance and social protection. And compliance is monitored by a European Committee of Social Rights, based on reports from member states and collective complaints by the social partners and international non-governmental organisations.
Not all of the Council of Europe’s 46 member states have however ratified the current, or in a few cases original, version of the charter, which after 35 years of existence was revised in 1996, or the 1995 protocol establishing the collective-complaints mechanism . Moreover, signatory states can under certain conditions select the provisions by which they agree to be bound.
Against this backdrop, the Council of Europe organised a High-Level Conference on the European Social Charter, taking place on July 4th 2024 in Vilnius, to encourage further commitments under the charter. This followed a Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik in 2022, at which the heads of state and government reaffirmed their ‘full commitment to the protection and implementation of social rights as guaranteed by the European Social Charter system’.
Social Europe was invited by the secretariat of the Council of Europe to cover the conference in Lithuania. Four articles, from diverse perspectives, were commissioned in the run-up to the event, with the editor-in-chief of Social Europe providing a wrap-up piece in the aftermath.
