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Last Thursday [15 September], European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility Marianne Thyssen was invited to answer an oral question on minimum income schemes in the European Union in the official session of the European Parliament. Thomas Händel (GUE), chair of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, asked Commissioner Thyssen to share the Commission’s views on what should be considered as adequate income support and what measures would be taken to assess and improve the quality of minimum income schemes in EU Member States.

It was positive to hear Commissioner Thyssen express her deep concern that poverty and growing inequalities hamper growth and social progress and fuel public mistrust, and her conviction that minimum income schemes are an important instrument to reverse this trend. Her desire to continue the work on reference budgets (budgets corresponding to goods and services considered necessary to reach an acceptable standard of living within a given country or region) as ways to determinate appropriate levels of income support is also welcome. Two elements in her discourse, however, were less encouraging.

Firstly, her focus on the need to link adequate income support to requirements for participation and activation measures for those of working age is concerning. Indeed, negative conditions and sanctions reduce the coverage and take-up of benefits, leaving the most vulnerable people in society in precarious situations and limiting the positive effect of minimum income schemes in the fight against poverty.

Secondly, and even more importantly, the lack of ambition with regard to implementation instruments is also disappointing. Commissioner Thyssen explained that exchange of best practices and peer review among Member States has been successful in enhancing the quality of minimum incomes schemes, and that the EU has no competence to take legislative action on this matter. Social Platform disagrees with this position; a framework directive on minimum income is not only necessary given the lack of progress in the adequacy of the level, coverage and take-up of minimum income support in a majority of Member States eight years after the publication of the Active Inclusion Recommendation, but it is also feasible. As explained in our position paper on an EU Directive on adequate minimum income, a legal basis for such a directive already exists in the Treaties. And Social Platform is not the only organisation to be convinced of the added value it would have; the European Economic and Social Committee expressed its support for the measure in 2013, and the European Trade Union Confederation has included it in the priorities of its Action Programme 2015-2019 .

If Marianne Thyssen wants to achieve her objective of making the upcoming European Pillar of Social Rights a new reference framework that would help to build adequate and sustainable social security systems, as she stated before the European Parliament, ambitious initiatives of this type will have to be implemented. As Member of the European Parliament Sergio Gutiérrez Pietro (S&D) said, it is now time for action and not for speeches.