Please note that this does not constitute a formal record of the proceedings of the meeting. It is dependent on interpretation and acts as an unofficial summary of the debate.
On September 30, the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs met of a consideration of a draft resolution and questions for an oral answer by the Council of Ministers and the Euroepan Commission on the topic ‘Employment and social aspects of the EU 2020 Strategy’. Please find below a summary of the debate that took place. Note that the meeting documents referred to in the briefing are available here.
The acting committee chair Marita Ulvskog (S&D, SE) began by saying that since 2010 the number of people unemployed or at risk of poverty has risen and that the EU may not achieve the EU 2020 employment targets if no adequate measures are taken to bring people back into jobs. She added that, as a result of problems on the labour markets, social imbalances have risen in the EU, too. She said that in this context, she drafted a set of questions to the European Commission and to the Council of Ministers, supplemented by a draft resolution on ‘Employment and social aspects of the EU2020 strategy’ in order to inquire how the two institutions aim to bring down unemployment in the EU. These questions, she read, are:
- To the European Commission:
- Does the Commission agree that the economic crisis together with fiscal consolidation resulted in reduced investment towards achieving the Europe 2020 employment and social targets?
- Why do the Commission's Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) not call on Member States for more ambitious commitments in their National Reform Programmes (NRPs), since most current NRP targets are insufficient to meet the EU2020 Strategy goals?
- Has the Commission considered increasing the contribution of the EU budget towards the achievement of the EU2020 employment and social targets?
- Does the Commission agree that employment and poverty reduction targets should be made as binding as those of fiscal consolidation, in order to put social considerations on an equal footing with macroeconomic ones?
- To the Council of Ministers:
- Does the Council agree that the economic crisis together with fiscal consolidation resulted in reduced investment towards achieving the Europe 2020 employment and social targets?
- Does the Council agree that the new employment and social scoreboard would provide a more thorough picture of Member States' progress if complemented with additional indicators? If so, which additional indicators are needed?
- Has the Council considered making the employment and poverty reduction targets as binding as those of fiscal consolidation, in order to put social consideration on an equal footing with macroeconomic ones?
- How does the Council envisage increasing the involvement of social partners at Member States' level to ensure the successful implementation of the EU2020 Strategy?
Jutta Steinruck (S&D, DE) said the texts are “very good” especially when it comes to the referrals made:
- to exclude from the calculation of national deficits for the period 2015-2020 those social investments which are aimed at achieving the employment and social targets of the EU2020 Strategy (paragraph 10 of the draft resolution);
- to make the scoreboard of key employment and social indicators binding (paragraph 5 of the draft resolution);
- to not neglect social policies and poverty reduction targets vis-à-vis fiscal and macroeconomic ones (paragraph 6 of the draft resolution).
David Casa (EPP, MT) only said that he would consider tabling amendments at a later stage.
Marian Harking (ALDE, IE) said that she, too, will table a number of amendments. In this context, she also had a number of suggestions. These were, most notably:
- to complement, in paragraph 9 of the draft resolution, ‘the need for increased infrastructure investments and encourages to link these investments to concrete employment goals’ with specific referrals to, for example, green jobs, research & development (R&D), and the digital market;
- to consider watering down the call made in paragraph 10 of the draft resolution to exclude ‘social investment aimed at achieving the employment and social targets of the EU2020 Strategy’ from the calculation of national deficits for the period 2015-2020;
- to think, in the two sets of oral questions, about using a term like ‘Does the Commission/Council consider ...’ rather than ‘Does the Commission/Council agree ...’.
She also wanted to know what ‘mutually agreed contractual arrangements’ means in paragraph 7 of the draft resolution and if the ‘single indicator of relative poverty’ referred to in paragraph 15 of that document exists as such and has been used before.
Gabriele Zimmer (GUE/NGL, DE) declared her support for the draft texts, saying that they “set out the right priorities” and “make clear that good jobs are related to combating poverty”.
Following up to the last point of Ms. Harkin’s intervention, she explained that the concept of relative poverty is not new and that there are EU documents available that discuss it [e.g. the European Commission’s ‘Combating poverty and social exclusion: A statistical portrait of the EU 2010’]
Jean Lambert (Greens/EFA, UK) stressed that the two sets of questions should also mention the need for investments in potential future-oriented job-rich sectors.
In matters of the draft resolution, she suggested tailoring the text further towards aspects of inclusive growth and smart sustainability in Europe 2020.
She announced that she will table amendments accordingly.
She concluded by informing her colleagues that, with regards to the discussion on relative poverty, the European Minimum Income Network (EMIN) is currently working on pieces of advice on how using both relative and absolute poverty indicators may be possible.
Siôn Simon (S&D, UK) expressed his frustration that debt criteria for Member States “bite” while the Europe 2020 employment targets are not binding and that failing them does not entail sanctions. He declared that this is “fundamentally unfair”.
Georgi Pirinski (S&D, BG) said that a compromise on the call, as expressed in paragraph 10 of the draft resolution, to exclude social investment aimed at achieving the employment and social targets of the EU2020 Strategy from the calculation of national deficits for the period 2015-2020 would be to exclude from the target the net increases of public expenditures in this area from deficit targets on a year-to-year basis.
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