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With the release by the Commission last week of the winter package, which includes the 2018 country reports, we got to the second stage of this year European semester cycle, the governance process that coordinates Member States’ economic and social policies and reforms.

Compared to the autumn package of stage one, when with the release of the Annual Growth Survey the assessment focuses on the broader picture and on EU-wide trends, the country reports allow us to zoom in on Member States’ socio-economic achievements and challenges.

These documents are of utmost importance because they are the basis on which national governments elaborate their National Reform Programmes and Stability/Convergence Programmes – the documents that detail the specific policies and reforms each country will implement to achieve the Europe 2020 goals and to comply with the EU’s general fiscal rules – and because they give a clear indication of what challenges the Commission is likely to address in the Country Specific Recommendations that will be put forward before summer: whatever does not appear in the executive summary of the country reports will not be considered when formulating the recommendations.

What makes this year’s country reports even more important is that these are the first ones released since the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights last November in Gothenburg: their content represents an important test to assess the commitment of the Commission.

Commissioner Marianne Thyssen, responsible for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, rightly acknowledged that “the success of the Pillar depends on the extent to which we implement it”, and the European Semester, together with funding and legislation, is a key tool to meaningfully and successfully implement the Social Pillar (see Social Platform’s position on a comprehensive implementation plan for the European Pillar of Social Rights).

So what can we say about this first test? The initial impressions are clearly positive.

Each report has a table monitoring Member States’ performance in light of the Social Pillar. The social scoreboard – the monitoring tool created to assess Member States’ compliance with and progress towards the 20 principles of the the Pillar – has a very prominent role throughout the reports and its main findings feature in the exective summaries.

Overall, the social insights are more ‘profound’ than used to be the case before, with more attention payed to e.g. the redistributive effect of social transfers, the multiple dimensions of inequality (with scrutiny given not only to income inequalities but also to inequalities of opportunity, health inequalities, inequality in education, etc., with also a more in-depth focus on how outcomes in these fields correlate with socio-economic background), and to gaps in welfare coverage and access to social protection, especially for certain group of workers in atypical, self, seasonal/temporary employment. Light is also more consistently shed on those vulnerable groups that are at increasing risk of poverty and social exclusion , including Roma, people with disabilities, and children.

Civil society has played a positive role in getting to this point, providing the institutions involved in the European Semester process with up-to-date data and information about the challenges at national, regional and local level, increasing ownership and making the process more in sync with the realities on the ground.

Certainly these positive developments don’t overshadow the fact that the current configuration of the social scoreboard remains problematic, in as much as it doesn’t shed light on some worrying trends underpinning what remains an economic recovery that doesn’t benefit all segments of our societies (see our analysis here). Neither can we neglect that business as usual in May, with only one ‘social CSR’, wouldn’t be enough to implement the Pillar and build a truly social Europe, so that decisive moment will come later this year.

However, the 2018 country reports undoubtedly mark a step forward in furthering the ‘socialisation’ of the European Semester. In partnership with the EU institutions, national goverments, social partners and other stakeholders, we stand ready to cooperate and bring this progress further, making sure it has a positive impact on people’s lives across Europe.