Three and a half years after the Gothenburg Summit, which resulted in the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), heads of State and government will meet once again on 7 and 8 May 2021 for the Porto Social Summit. [ Ссылка ] This summit is set to mark a significant moment in the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), which has made the task of strengthening the European social model one of its priorities. The aim of the Social Summit will be to give a political impetus at all levels (European institutions, Member States, social partners and civil society) to the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and more specifically to endorse its Action Plan. Set out in the European Council’s 2019-2024 strategic agenda and in Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines, the roadmap, which translates the twenty principles of the Pillar into concrete initiatives, was presented by the European Commission on 4 March 2021 following a broad public consultation that lasted almost one year and gathered more than 1000 contributions.
The severe social impacts of the pandemic, the worst of which may yet be to come, in addition to the acceleration of the green and digital transitions brought by the crisis and the European and national recovery plans, mean that implementing the EPSR is of the utmost priority. In this respect, the Porto Social Summit must be a pivotal moment for Social Europe. The time has come for the laudable statements calling for greater solidarity, inclusion and social justice to be translated into actions.
The road from Gothenburg to Porto
In October 2014, during his first address to the European Parliament, the President-elect of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, set out his ambition for the EU to achieve a social triple-A rating, just like an economic or financial triple-A rating. The proclamation of the EPSR in 2017 confirmed the social ambition of the Juncker presidency, which then seized such an opportunity to turn into concrete initiatives some of the principles of the EPSR. By means of example, it proposed a Directive on work-life balance, and two initiatives aimed at ensuring transparent and predictable working conditions and access to social protection for all workers, including the self-employed. In addition, the Juncker Commission strove to ‘socialise’ the European semester by including the Social Scoreboard and taking into account the principles of the Pillar in the country-specific recommendations.
The Juncker Commission did, however, leave it to its successor to adopt a roadmap for the implementation of the EPSR, called for in particular by European trade unions. In her address to the European Parliament in November 2019, the President-elect of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen placed social issues on top of the European agenda, this time under the lens of just transitions, to make sure that “the transitions of climate-neutrality, digitalisation and demographic change are socially fair and just”.
Yet the COVID-19 pandemic reshuffled the deck for Ursula von der Leyen. Before the pandemic, the stars appeared to be aligned in the EU. Growth had been on the rise since 2014, and poverty declining since 2012. Unemployment, which peaked at 11.4% in 2013, fell to 6.7% at the end of the Juncker term in 2019. Today, the indicators are in the red. In 2020, the EU recorded a recession of 6.2%, and the rising unemployment rate may worsen with the end of short-time work schemes rolled out by States. COVID-19 has also increased the share of the European population at risk of poverty or social exclusion, by 4.8 percentage points according to the Commission’s preliminary estimates, which has in particular been reflected in an upsurge in the need for food aid. This is compounded by growing inequalities –particularly between the most qualified (highest-income) and least qualified (lowest-income) groups, and between young people and older populations – and the risk that home schooling affects equal opportunities. The impact of the pandemic has also been exacerbated for women, who are not only on the front line facing the disease (as “essential” workers) and facing job losses (in the worst affected sectors), but who, at the same time, have had to take on the lion’s share of household chores and children’s education during lockdowns.
Against this backdrop, a collective commitment to turn the EPSR principles into actions on the occasion of the Porto Social Summit is particularly urgent as the social repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis are likely to be heightened in the coming months.
2. A roadmap for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights
[ Ссылка ] #eudebates
