On the General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 - all sections

The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs calls on the Committee on Budgets, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following into its motion for a resolution:

1.Underscores persistent socio-economic challenges facing the EU, including barriers to growth and competitiveness, demographic change, poverty, in particular child and in-work poverty, social exclusion and the increased cost of living, lack of housing affordability and accessibility, unequal access to public services, pension adequacy and sustainability, unemployment - especially high among young people and precarious jobs, requiring budgetary support; stresses the need for adequate resources for EU employment and social policies and to adapt skills, training and industrial policies to ensure a just twin transition;

2.Highlights the vital role of the EU programmes in the employment and social fields, and especially those linked to the European Social Fund plus (ESF+), European Globalisation Fund, Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund, in supporting the Union’s economic, social and territorial cohesion and fostering economic resilience; underlines that the ESF+ is the main EU instrument for investing in people, promoting high employment levels, fair social protection and developing a skilled and resilient workforce ready for the transition to a green and digital economy, as well as inclusive and cohesive societies aiming at eradicating poverty and delivering on the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights; underlines in this regard the importance of increasing public and social investments; calls for a strong and dedicated financial envelope and thematic concentrations for the stand- alone and separate ESF in the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to promote upwards social convergence and quality employment; reminds that a strong Social Union is key to Europe’s competitiveness;

3.Deplores that 1 in 5 people in the EU, including 19.5 million children in 2024, are at risk of poverty or social exclusion; welcomes the publication of the EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and its related initiatives on strengthening the European Child Guarantee, supporting the activation of people excluded from the labour market and fighting housing exclusion; stresses, however, that achieving these policy commitments requires the allocation of commensurate budgetary resources and urges the Commission to commit sufficient resources to anti-poverty actions in the 2027 budget as well as in the next MFF; reiterates Parliament's repeated call to significantly increase the funding of the European Child Guarantee with a dedicated budget of at least EUR 20 billion and calls on all Member States, not only those most affected by child poverty, to allocate at least 5 % of the ESF+ resources under shared management to support activities under the European Child Guarantee; insists on increased ambition to eradicate and prevent homelessness across Europe through the implementation of the Housing First principle;

4.Highlights the significant geographical diversity of social problems and the key role that regions play in addressing them. In this context, it highlights the close link between effective social policy and a well-funded cohesion policy;

5.Underlines the importance of sufficient and ongoing, multiannual budgetary support to achieve the social policy priorities of the Union, such as quality jobs and the fair labour mobility;

6.Calls for mainstreaming gender in all EU policies, programmes and actions; calls for a gender responsive budget through gender budgeting, for an adequately funded budget to promote equal participation and treatment of women in the labour market as well as for comprehensive systems be put in place to monitor and measure gender budget allocations, women’s participation in the labour market, access to employment, pay and pension gaps;

7.Insists that the rules governing the use of EU funds must include social conditionalities to ensure quality jobs and enhance compliance with social rights and democratic principles, the fundamental rights of workers and applicable working conditions; further calls for more effective social conditionalities in rules on public procurement and concessions to promote collective bargaining;

8.Stresses the importance of the role of the EU budget in implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan and achieving its 2030 targets through increased targeted investment at EU and national level; recalls the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) and Action Plan of 4 March 2021, including the EU 2030 headline targets for jobs, skills and poverty reduction, the Porto Declaration of 8 May 2021 on social affairs adopted by the members of the European Council, the Tripartite Declaration for a Thriving European Social Dialogue, and the La Hulpe Declaration on the Future of the European Pillar of Social Rights; expects the forthcoming update of the Action Plan to contain concrete proposals to implement existing priorities as well as address new challenges and that these proposals should be accompanied with adequate support in the 2027 EU budget as well as the next MFF; underlines the important role of the ESF+ and its effective use along with cohesion funds for its implementation in this regard;

9.Calls on Member States to accelerate the uptake of EU funds and fully utilise available resources under the current MFF; underlines that efforts to enhance competitiveness should go hand in hand with continued support for social priorities and policies, ensuring that the Union's social values and citizens' needs remain at the heart of the European project; points out the extensive and complicated rules for spending EU funds and calls on the Commission for their simplification in the next MFF in order to streamline the entire process; urges the Commission to increase technical assistance and other forms of supports to Member States to support increased absorption of funds;

10.Points out the need to support women, children, youth, families, and groups in vulnerable situations such as persons with disabilities and Roma with dedicated programmes and funding; advocating for targeted measures to combat youth unemployment, child poverty and social exclusion; stresses the need to pay special attention to single parents and large families;

11.Emphasises the lack of policy responses to mitigate the impact of demographic challenges with an ageing population due to declining birth rates and extended life expectancies; points out that changes in demography are a major challenge for the Union's competitiveness and the sustainability of its labour markets and social systems and a serious horizontal problem across the EU, which requires a strategic approach and long-term solutions; underscores the importance of adequate funding for both long-term and early childhood education and care and support services, including crèche and nursing home public networks, upskilling and improving working conditions in the sector; stresses as well the importance of adequate and sustainable pension provisions in this regard, particularly for women; emphasises the need to develop targeted policies addressing specific needs of the workforce at all ages as well as specific needs of workers with disabilities and chronic diseases, such as musculoskeletal disorders, or workers returning to work after longer periods of absence;

12.Calls for enhanced support for family-friendly policies, in particular through access to affordable child and long-term care and to sustainable and affordable housing, including social housing;

13.Considers that a skilled and workforce is essential for enhancing the Union's competitiveness and resilience against external shocks and to navigate the twin transition successfully and to prepare for the fast development of technologies including AI; recognises the essential role of skills, vocational education and training (VET), quality and paid traineeships, apprenticeships and lifelong learning in this regard; stresses the need to ensure adequate funding in Budget 2027 for skills policies, particularly Union of Skills initiatives, under ESF+ as well as the Just Transition Fund and Net Zero Industry Academies; emphasises the need to adapt training, up-skilling, re-skilling and lifelong learning to labour market needs; emphasises that employment and social policies must serve workers' social and economic needs and aim to ensure stable and secure employment, decent working conditions, fair wages, and a life in dignity; calls therefore for adequate funding to support skills development, in particular in artificial intelligence, in strategic and in transitioning sectors, in order to best meet the needs of the work force and enterprises;

14.Stresses that occupational safety and health are an essential priority, and that the EU and Member States must strengthen preventive measures and enforcement to protect workers from physical and psychosocial risks, while ensuring adequate compensation, rehabilitation and reintegration in case of workplace accidents and occupational diseases; stresses the importance of addressing psychosocial risks in the workplace and in investing the national labour authorities and inspectorates;

15.Emphasises the essential role of the five EU agencies active in employment and social policy, namely the European Labour Authority, the European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training and the European Training Foundation and stresses that they should be provided with commensurate financial and human resources to fulfil their mandates and respond to evolving tasks; underlines the need to ensure sufficient resources for the ETF beyond July 2027 to guarantee continuity of operations; recalls the forthcoming Commission proposal to Strengthen the European Labour Authority, and underlines that changes to ELA’s mandate and scope must be supported by corresponding and adequate budget;

16.Recalls that pilot projects (PPs) and preparatory actions (PAs) are essential to test new policy initiatives in the fields of employment and social inclusion, including through providing data collection; repeats its call on the Commission to evaluate PP/PA proposals impartially on the basis of a legal and financial assessment in a way that reflects their merit and implement them as they were adopted;

17.Stresses the need to continuously improve the efficiency of the Union's administrative expenditure, in particular through better coordination between European agencies and the elimination of duplication in line with strategic priorities;

18.Recalls that multilingualism is a fundamental principle that makes the content of discussions within the EU institutions more accessible and transparent and constitutes a guarantee of their democratic functioning; considers, however, that reductions in the quantity and quality of translation and interpretation services, resulting from budgetary constraints, the increasing outsourcing of these services and the deterioration of the working conditions of those who provide them, threaten multilingualism; calls, therefore, for increased funding for the translation and interpretation services of the EU institutions, in particular the European Parliament, while ensuring the internalisation of the workers providing these services and their direct and permanent employment by the EU institutions;

19.Regrets the decrease in the allocation for the budget line 07 20 04 09 (Information and training measures for workers’ organisations); recalls that it is key to guarantee adequate funding for this budget line and to ensure that EU support for information and training measures for workers’ organisations is strengthened, not reduced, for 2027; highlights that strong social dialogue is a key feature of the European social model; recalls the commitment of the Union to promote the role of social partners and to facilitate social dialogue, in line with Article 152 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; stresses the necessity to ensure adequate support for social dialogue and to develop and improve the capacity of social partners and to increase the allocation for this budget line.