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On February 20, the European Commission presented its long expected Social Investment Package (SIP). Through this package, the Commission is calling on member states to "prioritise social investment and to modernise their welfare states". Different members of Social Platform have voiced a first rather positive observation of the approach the Commission is taking with the SIP.

The SIP consists of a framework Communication, accompanied by a Recommendation on Child poverty and Staff Working Documents on demographic changes (part 1 and part 2), the implementation of the Active Inclusion Recommendation, social services of general interest, long-term care, homelessness, health and the European Social Fund.

Commissioner Andor, who presented the SIP stated that: "Member states need to shift their focus to investment in human capital and social cohesion. By investing now, Member States can avoid paying a much higher financial and social bill in the future. We have, unfortunately, seen examples when social expenditures have been decimated in the name of competitiveness, or similar misguided ideas. Short-sightedness, however, can be very costly." A strong link was made to the importance of guaranteeing the social dimension of the European Economic and Monetary Union, about which future the Council is currently discussing.

For the Commission, the aim of social investment is to help people to adapt to societal challenges such as a changing labour market, and to help people to avoid hardship such as falling into poverty or losing their homes (prepare rather than repair). Examples are early childhood education and care, prevention of early school leaving, lifelong learning, training and job-search assistance, housing support, accessible health services and facilitating living independently in old age. Social investment is considered as one of the functions of social policies, alongside social protection and stabilisation of the economy.

The focus of the SIP is on "simple, targeted and conditional social investment" and has the ambition to give guidance to member states on:

•     Increasing the sustainability and adequacy of social systems – how to make social systems more efficient and effective and how to do more with the money available
•     Activating and enabling policies – upgrade active inclusion strategies, including through establishing reference budgets to help designing efficient and adequate income support
•     investment throughout the individual's life – aiming at responding to people's needs at critical moments throughout their lives and paying particular attention to children and child poverty

In addition to this, the SIP has the intention of providing guidance for the use of EU Funds and the ESF in particular, as source for social investment.

The Commission wants to try and link the European Semester processes back to the poverty, employment and education targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy, by asking member states to report on the progress of implementing the SIP in their National Reform Programmes and by following up on this through the Country Specific Recommendations.

It is however not clearly said in the SIP what is to be understood by "conditional social investment" nor is specified how and to which kind of social benefits this could be applied.

We also have some reservations on the encouragement to invest resources of both the non-profit and for-profit parts of the private sector in social policies and social services. This could lead member states to disengage from the provision and funding of social policies and services, which is their primary responsibility. As we stated in our response to the Social Business Initiative, private funding does not have to replace public money to fund social services and support social economy and social entrepreneurship. For instance the participation of private investors to European and national lending mechanisms must be accompanied by the guarantee that the control of social enterprises rests in the hands of social enterprises themselves. Having in mind the example of Southern Cross in the UK (see the Guardian), it is also important not to consider private public partnerships as the recipe to cope with lack of public funding. At any rate, these partnerships have to be highly regulated.

What is not included in the SIP, is a specific main focus on the governance of Europe 2020 and more specifically on how to streamline social policies throughout all policy areas to achieve more balance between the social and the economic priorities, as it was previously announced at the Stakeholder meeting on the European Platform Against Poverty and Social Exclusion in September last year or in the announcement of the SIP some weeks ago. The Commission had suggested to set up guidelines on the involvement of stakeholders by member states in the preparation of the National Reform Programmes and to make a bigger effort to consult civil society organisations in the process of the Annual Growth Survey and the Country Specific Recommendations. The SIP now only refers briefly to possible initiatives to "streamline governance and reporting.

Read the first assessments of the SIP by some of our members:

– Solidar
– EAPN
– Eurodiaconia
– EPHA
– Eurochild
– Cecodhas