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The European Pillar of Social Rights: a new chance for a revisited social Europe? The question of the inclusion and quality of life of workers in a revisited social policy scheme

From 28 to 29 November 2017 took place in Liverpool a working group about “The European Pillar of Social Rights: a new chance for a revisited social Europe? The question of the inclusion and quality of life of workers in a revisited social policy scheme”, organized by Beweging.academie, with the support of EZA and of the European Union. The working group was part of the EZA project series on the "Strategies of European institutions – the European Pillar of Social Rights".

18 representatives of workers’ organisations from Belgium, UK, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, France and Hungary participated in the working group.

The working group took place in the same period as the Gothenburg Council, where the Heads of State signed the declaration of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR).

The working group analysed different aspects of the European Pillar of social rights in depth. The EPSR is an important step forward in EU social policies but in order to make further progress, it is vital to overcome important divergences in the member states and to put forward an implementation path for the Pillar. With this working group we discussed the possibilities and necessities of such an implementation.

The following topic fields were discussed:

  • the implementation possibilities of the EPSR
  • rethinking development and investment in organisations
  • the EPSR from out a macro-economic perspective
  • translation of the social rights in the notion of European citizenship
  • linking the question of citizenship with inequality and inequity
  • cross-overs of social citizenship beyond the EU
  • social rights of people with a history of migration
  • are EU law and policy human enough: the EPSR analysed from out a human rights perspective
  • the aspect of minimum wages and social rights in Central and Eastern Europe
  • the aspect of employment policy and the EPSR
  • the aspect of anti-poverty policies
  • the aspect of health and disabilities
  • decent housing as a social right

Seminar results

The following challenges for implementing the Pillar of Social Rights were identified: limited competences of the EU in the social field, a very limited budget of the EU in social matters as well as a general climate of fiscal and social dumping. Against this backdrop, a three-pillar strategy was proposed for the first stage of implementation.

  1. Preventing social regression

The legal basis that can be used in order to prevent social regression is the Horizontal Clause (Art. 9 TFEU): “In defining and implementing its policies and activities, the Union shall take into account requirements linked to the promotion of a high level of employment, the guarantee of adequate social protection, the fight against social exclusion, and a high level of education, training and protection of human health.” However, this clause is quite vague in its formulation (“take into account, high level, adequate,…”) and unclear if it confers legislative power to the EU. In practice, we see a systematic use of social impact assessments for each legislative initiative of the EU. Nevertheless, this is carried out by consulting bureaus, without democratic deliberation. Moreover, the horizontal clause or a social impact assessment is not referred to or applied in other policy initiatives such as the European Semester, the macro-economic adjustment programs imposed by the Troika, etc. As a result, socially harmful EU policies have remained common practice.

How can the EU make the horizontal social clause more tangible?

It was proposed to introduce participatory social impact assessments for all policy initiatives of the EU as well as to introduce legal non-regression clauses freezing policy decisions that put fundamental social rights at risk, both at EU as well as at member state level. In order to stop fiscal and social dumping, fiscal harmonisation was suggested, which restores progressive income taxation in member states with common bottom and top rates. Next to that, a coordination of corporate taxation at EU level should be introduced, as well as social minimum standards in the labour market, in social protection and in service markets.

  1. Mainstreaming the EPSR

Recognising the increasing number of ‘social’ country specific recommendations, a second proposal reiterates that the Pillar of Social Rights allows for a yearly follow-up and EPSR-related country specific recommendations. In order to mainstream the pillar incentives should be installed such as for example an ex-ante conditioning of access to European Structural and Investment Funds. The annual Growth Survey should be broadened into an ‘Annual Survey of Sustainable development’ and the Joint Employment report should be broadened into a ‘Joint Employment and Social Development Report’, making use of benchmarks, accountability mechanisms, sanctions and peer reviews for good practice. Furthermore, the EPSR should be integrated into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in order to reflect convergence between the EPSR and the Sustainable Development Goals in its key objectives. It was also proposed to make us of the same instruments of the Europe 2020 strategy (headline targets, flagship programmes, etc.) and to extend the social dimension of (the proposal to deepen) the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This could be done by an extension of the social scoreboard, by an introduction of an ‘excessive social imbalance procedure’, comprising a specific alert mechanism and an appropriate stabilisation mechanism (for example an EU unemployment re-insurance or anti-poverty fund) and by strengthening the democratic accountability of the EMU.

  1. Financing social investment

A third pillar to implement the EPSR builds upon the need to encourage and finance social investment. The European Institutions could therefore make more targeted use of European Social Investment Funds, as well as of the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), the so-called ‘Juncker Plan’. The commission could introduce a coordinated increase in tax revenues in the member states through coordination the fight against tax fraud and evasion, wealth taxation and financial transaction taxes and through an enhanced EU budget including social investment funds and a social stabilisation mechanism.

Conclusion

According to the seminar participants, Europe must go for a real social Europe and full European citizenship. Bu in order to arrive at a real social Europe, one has to solve questions about the democratic deficit: is a ‘European public space’ really possible? Another question resulting from this debate is the question whether a variety in welfare regimes is desirable and manageable in the future of Europe which we want: is welfare still a national competence in Europe? Is convergence possible in the short term? What about solidarity? How can Europe govern a multitude of cultures, identities and languages? Is subsidiarity an answer to this question? What about the multiple interpretations of rights and duties? Is full European citizenship possible?

Implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights: the way forward from citizenship to social citizenship

To be a citizen implies having rights and related obligations with the capacity to impute itself a territorial, ex-ante responsibility. Adequate rationality and values (responsibility) of a citizen determine the effective behavior measured in terms of capabilities. A person is therefore considered in a more universal vision for the ex-ante responsibility. Moreover, a distinction needs to be addressed for the word ‘social’: the ‘social dimension’ which is related to ‘social sectors’, and the ‘societal dimension’ related to ‘social interactions’.

This implies a particular rationality: first, citizenship is based on rights and related duties (through the key ex-ante responsibility) on a territorial base. Second, the societal dimension allows to relate social rights (and capabilities) to the quality of social interactions and their effect on ‘social cohesion’ (quality of the society). Opening up the concept of citizenship towards “social citizenship” allows various scales of “European citizenship” through subsidiarity, various partnerships having a tailored “world citizenship” related to the social-societal dimension. Social citizenship leads to specific social policies and public actions related to social justice: equality (of rights and duties) and equity (at local level), through solidarity-based initiatives (f. ex. fair trade), social entrepreneurship. With reference to values such as the recognition of the more vulnerable (precariat) for solidarity intervention, or equity for redistribution policies in front of inequalities.

The usefulness of the “Social citizenship” notion can be understood in two ways:

  • A way to compensate the influence of the neo-liberal thought devoted to growth through supply-side economics 
  • The possibility of stopping social disinvestment by promoting social rights and justice through solidarity-based initiatives.