From 22 to 23 March 2021 took place the sixth HIVA-EZA conference on “The state of the welfare state in EU anno 1992 and a quarter of a century later”, organized by HIVA in cooperation with EZA and with the support of the European Union.
More than 150 persons from 30 countries participated in the conference that wanted to be a meeting place between the workers organisations for which EZA stands, the scientific community, the social security administrations, and policy makers.
Main conclusions of the key-note speakers:
Peter Wouters, President the Christian Labour Movement in Flanders Beweging.net and President of HIVA confirms his trust in the model of the social market economy, the ‘Rhineland-model’ as a solid design of the past but future-proof. If we are willing to pay for it. This has to be guaranteed for the future, even as a national (welfare) state within a global market economy.
Actual President of EZA, Luc Van den Brande, former Minister President of Flanders, highlighted the role of EZA as a ‘smart power’ that not only contributes to inspire the European institutions, anchored in treaties and laws, to develop further the European social model within a global context of European integration and beyond. Its role is also one of social dialogue between workers organisations and their ambitions and the EU institutions themselves that develop their plans for further progress…at European, national, but especially at the level of the European citizen. Bridging the gap between the institutions and the citizen, here by the way of workers organisations, remains the main role of EZA. In her closing comments Secretary-General of EZA Sigrid Schraml illustrated how this has remained possible within Covid Pandemic crisis.
Former President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy was again prepared to give his view on how Europe the last five years evolved, and especially how Europe is overcoming the greatest health and economic crisis of the Covid-pandemic. He gave already five years ago on the fifth conference his overview of the previous five years, that were at the same time his five years of Presidency of the European Council from November 2009 – November 2014. He comments in the sixth conference on the relation between economic development and the welfare state, ‘after corona’. He reminded us that Europe learned his lesson that we need a different economic and budgetary answer on crises than how we handled the financial and credit crisis of 2008 2011. Those lessons helped to overcome the present crisis. But the instruments that have been put in place today needs to become permanent. And the present health and economic crisis creates new inequalities, that will need additional solidarity. Just before around the time of the conference also in Belgium a new upsurge of the pandemic (the third one) occurred, he warned for the vicious circle of ‘infections-restrictions-reduced infections-less stricter rules-new infections’. He further warned us that another virus was still present, that is the virus of populism that is still spreading. Before the 2019 European elections there was indeed a widespread fear that this could have influenced the elections. After the elections there was the relief that it did not materialize. Herman van Rompuy warned us that populism is still in search of growing popularity. Finally, as in previous conference, he again invites the audience to keep in mind that the focus of the conference on the state of the welfare state should be even larger, the reconciliation of economic development, social progress … but also environmental challenges and our responsibility in also that matter.
Kees Korte, Director General of DG EMPL confirmed that we correctly could have ‘great expectations’ for the future of social Europe. Those last five years, following major steps in the ‘social Europe’ were made: a) the acceptance of the European Pillar of social rights and the flow of new social initiatives; b) the growing ‘socialisation’ of the European Semester; c) the growing social dimension of the recovery instruments and plans, including the EU Next Generation and Recovery and Resilience Fund, but also including the existing social fund and d) finally, because in the Brexit, social dimensions have been maintained in the transition and new agreement. He even wondered if, with the UK still in the EU, this renewed progress for a Social Europe would have been so strong. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining?’
We found confirmation in Mr. Korte’s speech how timely the series of HIVA-EZA conference was when we decided in the nineties to take this initiative of welfare state monitoring. He mentioned that the Social Summit in Gothenburg in 2017, where the EPSR was solemnly approved, was the first Social Summit since 1999. Our concern was right. Mr. Korte recommended HIVA and EZA also: ‘…ga zo door‘ [keep it up].
The ambitions of the five-yearly HIVA – EZA conference is to warn us for potential challenges in the social Europe and points us to new opportunities to develop it further. Again, and again. Because by repetition, we hopefully will learn.
So we can conclude that the welfare state is crises-proof: this has been even more confirmed by the present Covid-crisis. We also learned already/fortunately the lesson of the austerity policies after the debt crisis of 2011-2012.
We can also conclude that rich economies spend more for social protection, but we realised with the Covid-crisis that we even/still underdeveloped some of those systems (health care, long-term care).
And we can conclude that there has been a slowdown in economic convergence but especially in social convergence: but that is at our own discretion.