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Last Friday [20 February] marked the United Nations’ World Day of Social Justice – an issue that is central to Social Platform’s strategic orientation. However, the new European Commission does not talk about social justice, it talks about social fairness. So what is the difference?

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker mentioned the need for fairness – including social fairness – during his presentation of the Commission’s political guidelines to the European Parliament in July 2014, stating, “The stability of our single currency and the solidity of public finances are as important to me as social fairness in implementing necessary structural reforms”. Unfortunately, social fairness remains an abstract concept as the Commission has failed to give it any definition. I have serious doubts that the Commission will make much headway until it sets out what it believes constitutes social fairness, as it has done with economic issues that are supposedly of equal importance.

The approach taken by the United Nations is different, focusing instead on social justice. When celebrating last year’s World Day of Social Justice, the UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that “experience shows that economic growth, on its own, is not sufficient. We must do more to empower individuals through decent work, support people through social protection, and ensure the voices of the poor and marginalised are heard”. It seems to me that the UN’s approach prioritises social justice and the impact of policies on people above structural reforms. This is where the main difference is.

I believe that if the EU had prioritised social justice in the past, we would not be experiencing the social emergency we see today. After seven years of crisis, one of our members, Caritas Europa, would not have needed to release its report “Poverty and Inequalities on the Rise – just social systems needed as the solution!”, showing that more than one-third of the population in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Latvia and Hungary are at risk of poverty. If we had social justice as our focus, Germany – the most prosperous economy in Europe according to Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband – would not have experienced a 15% increase in poverty in 2013. How is it possible to have such a level of poverty in the best performing country, according to current EU economic priorities?

The EU’s approach to social issues – no matter whether we call it justice, fairness, or something else altogether – has led to highly problematic tensions among governments and populations. During our networking visit to Riga in December 2014, we heard from Andris Gobiņš, President of European Movement in Latvia, his concerns about an increasingly common complaint from Latvians that, as a country with a high poverty rate that respects budgetary discipline, it should not fall to its citizens to loan money to Greece in order to increase minimum income or minimum wage in that country. As Europeans, we certainly deserve better debates than this one, and a first step towards this is the Commission defining its views on social fairness, and how – if at all – it differs from the social justice approach favoured by the UN. When it comes to money, as the second richest economic region in the world we should be able to find the financial resources to accommodate the needs of all Europeans, instead of pitting one population against the other.

Social Platform strives for social justice by putting people first in our list of priorities, and we will continue to argue for the Commission to do the same.

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand, Director