News

On September 30, the European Commission organised the 7th Stakeholder Dialogue meeting on the European Platform Against Poverty and Social Exclusion (EPAP), looking at the European Semester and the organisation of the next Annual Convention that will take place on November 26-27 this year.

During the meeting, a representative of the Commission explained how they are currently working on the preparation of the next Annual Growth Survey (AGS). The AGS is foreseen to be published on November 13 and should provide policy guidance for member states for the European Semester 2014. It is most likely that the headline priorities of last year will be maintained, which included "Tackling unemployment and the social consequences of the crisis". Social topics under this heading they are looking at now include: investing in children; reducing the number of jobless households and in-work through active inclusion, in-work benefits and the creation of extra jobs; and maintaining access to quality health care for all. It has been announced that on Wednesday October 2, the Commission will publish a proposal for a Scoreboard of social and employment indicators in the context of the Social Dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union. The idea would be to link the outcome of the Scoreboard to the European Semester. However, even the representative of the Commission says that just two days before the publication, it is still not sure what this Scoreboard will look like, and how it will be used.

Different stakeholders present at the meeting, stated that it is not enough to just keep the same "social" headline priority of the previous AGS. Already last year, it was said that the Commission should go further to properly address the issue of poverty and social exclusion. Social priorities should also not just be attached to financial and economic priorities and have to go beyond the preservation of today's and tomorrow's work-force. The lack of involvement of stakeholders including NGOs in developing the AGS was frowned upon. Disappointment was also expressed about the fact that the Commission still has not presented a Roadmap for the implementation of the Social Investment Package, published last February, while it was previously announce that such Roadmap would be ready in June.

The Commission informed stakeholders about how they are currently foreseeing to organise the Annual Convention of the EPAP. They gave an idea of what different sessions would be organised, but did not present an agenda. Workshops would be organised around the eight thematic and horizontal issues: Promoting effective investment in early childhood education and care; Inclusive education, inclusive labour markets for Roma integration; access to health care and health budgets; integrated strategies for re-housing homeless people; policy solutions for youth experiencing disadvantage; Innovative financial instruments developed with the private sector; poverty target: where are we?; and adequate income support (reference budgets).

During the afternoon, stakeholders could participate in a workshop focused on social policy innovation & experimentation. The Commission seemed to be convinced that the set of actions they put forward for social innovations will boost competitiveness. They expressed their aim to create an environment to produce innovations and support social entrepreneurs. They highlighted the fact that social programs must be experimented first at low scale before being generalised to avoid the cost of risk and uncertainty and that they would not support projects taking more than 3 years to produce positive outcomes. Such decisions – led by quick results-based management – may however be questioned as most social policies have effects in the long run. Some stakeholders also expressed the wish to see the Commission supporting more small projects and strengthening transnational initiatives, but the Commission was not in favour of this.

The next Stakeholder Dialogue meeting for the EPAP will take place on November 7.