News

We participated to the conference “Social Services of general interest in Europe and in Italy” organized by the University of Ferrara in cooperation with the Representation of the European Commission in Italy and some local authorities.

The first session “EU law is made for social services?” highlighted the difficulty for national contexts of social service provision to easily fit with EU concepts, policies and laws. At the opening the President of the Province of Rovigo said that in Italy in the area of social policies you never speak about EU policies: EU policies and laws are always mentioned with reference to economics.

Professor Laborde (University of Bordeaux) highlighted that in the French system the notion of public service and social service refers both to the type of operators (non-profit providers and profit providers) and the activities, while EU law takes into account only the nature of activities (economic or non-economic). Another difficulty is about how to conceptualize the EU concept of Social Service of General Interest with the French categories.

Professor Vielle (University of Louvain) demonstrated the soft boundaries between the concepts (economic and non-economic) and how the definition of social security differs in time and space.

Manuel Paolillo from the Belgian government gave a comprehensive overview of the difficulties in the application of EU law to social services and highlighted the opportunities and threats of this uneasy reconciliation.

Valentina Caimi from Social Platform presented three main challenges for a good functioning of social services across Europe:

•     increasing trend of profit-making providers active in the provision of social services: the risk is that profit making becomes the driving force of the provision of social (and health) services; in part this is an indirect consequence of the application of EU law to these services
•     the lack of a consistent and coherent recognition and protection of the specific characteristics of social services in EU law (public procurement, state aid, concessions, services directive), even if progress has been recently made
•     budgetary cuts as a consequence of austerity policies which undermine the universal access to social services and their quality (you can view the presentation in Italian).

The second day was dedicated to the national level seen from different perspectives of the Italian legal order: the governmental level, social services and public services (administrative law), social services and social security, and social services in the labour market.

Professor Pellizzer (administrative law) highlighted that the reforms carried out by Prime Minister Monti which have primarily targeted services of economic interest have foreseen a special treatment for all types of operators providing social services: recognition of the fact that social services are different from other public services (posts, telecommunications, transports etc.).

Professor Avio (social security law) highlighted the difficulties also in the Italian system to classify the relationship between social services and social security.

The representative from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Adriana Ciampa, explained the different forms of social service provision (directly by public authorities, by accredited private operators, by private providers selected in a public procurement procedure, etc.). She also said that the Ministry is working with the Regions in order to define the social services which are economic.

Contributions from the regional level were also very interesting. Materials will be available at the end of this month on the University web site, and an e-book was announced.