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Last week I contributed to a conference in Lisbon organised by the Centre for social studies of the University of Coimbra and the Lisbon ILO Office. What stroke me from the debate is the similarities one can observe in the developments concerning social protection  and social service provision in the EU.

Raymond Torres from ILO remarked that there is a tendency to externalise social protection to the third sector and social economy. In Europe many put into question social protection on the basis of three main arguments. It is of contrast to competitiveness (even if this is false), the lack of resources to finance it and the dysfunctions of the system. He remarked that one thing is improving social protection systems, another thing is questioning the right to social protection. Governments and public authorities look more and more at social economy and the third sector. Boosting complementarity and collaboration between social protection, social economy and the third sector is very positive – for exampple in the Netherlands this works very well. But this must not lead to member states transferring their responsibility for social protection to social economy and the third sector. This would be a very serious historical mistake.

The same trend emerged from my presentation about social service provision. In recent years the European Commission has promoted the development of social entrepreneurship, social innovation and social investment. Commissioner Bienkowska announced that one of her priorities is to develop a market of social impact investing (a new approach in funding the social sector, by the means of private investors). Collaboration and contamination between the different sectors can create positive synergies. However, this should not lead to shift state’s responsibility to other actors, being them old (social economy and third sector) or new (businesses and private investors). When public authorities decide not to provide services themselves or to use private money to fund them, they must bear their responsibility for setting the legal, financial and regulatory framework to ensure that everyone can have access to the services he or she needs. This entails responsibility for setting the strategic social service policy objectives, monitoring and evaluating their supply, and ensuring their availability and continuity even in remote and rural areas and for users with complex social needs.

New actors are coming in the social arena and public authorities have less money. These new relationships have to be shaped in a way that guarantees the right to social protection and quality social services for all.