Press

During its meeting of October 24-25, the European Council approved of the Commission’s Communication on the Social Dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that included a Social Scoreboard. Social Platform welcomes this acknowledgment of the Communication as a “positive step” but restates that the Scoreboard needs to trigger preventive and corrective policy action once it reflects excessive social imbalances.

It is positive to see the Council calling for the use of the Scoreboard and its indicators as early as the 2014 European Semester. Integrated in the European Semester, it should be used to counteract the negative effects of fiscal consolidation, and to finally move forward on the Europe 2020 poverty and employment targets.

“We hope this call from the Council will be followed up by the Commission in the Annual Growth Survey for 2014 that will be published on November 13, resulting in concrete guidelines and proposals to be taken up by member states and reported on in their National Reform Programmes” said Claire Roumet, Vice-President of Social Platform.

In line with this President Barroso at the Tripartite Social Summit already expressed the Commission’s commitment to use the Social Scoreboard for “employment and social concerns to be better integrated into all of our policies, including, of course, in our country-specific recommendations.”

Read the Conclusions of the European Council of October 24-25.

Read our letter to the European Council on the Social Dimension of the EMU.

2013-10-25