Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Removed4. Highlights the need to consider the distribution of quality employment in society due to the prevalence of poverty and social exclusion among certain groups in order to better design tailored activation and inclusion policies; stresses the importance of devoting particular attention to the younger generation, which still faces difficulties entering the labour market, and to children who are at a higher risk of falling into poverty and social exclusion; insists, in that respect, on the need to better assess the impact of current policies, with the aim of enhancing Member States’ capacity to foster upward social convergence;

Added2. Stresses the importance of innovation in the up-to-date monitoring of the labour market and of supply and demand for skills at the occupational, sectoral and regional level to assist in the identification, matching and forecasting of both opportunities and relevant occupational and transversal skills in order to prepare our economies to become more resilient to future shocks; calls on the Member States and training providers to improve cooperation with social partners, public authorities and business sectors, in order to identify existing skills needs and forecast future ones and to match these with the content and supply of training; underlines the equal importance of regular monitoring of working conditions through regular high-quality, representative EU-wide surveys, as well as of providing evidence on effective measures to forecast and address labour shortages;

Removed5. Recalls that the creation of good-quality jobs and the implementation of retention strategies are the best ways to attract a skilled workforce and calls on employers to invest in their workers; highlights that recruitment difficulties and labour shortages are particularly prevalent in sectors with challenging working conditions and poor job quality; highlights that creating high-quality, well-paid jobs that improve quality of life is therefore crucial;

Added3. Stresses the need to invest significantly in workers and to offer quality and future-oriented, inclusive and subsidised education and training that takes into account individual aspirations in areas linked to skills and competences that are in demand in labour markets and future-oriented sectors, according to local and regional needs, including through the recognition of an individual right for all to high quality and inclusive lifelong learning and at no cost to workers; calls on the Member States to address inequalities and gaps in access to training, as well as the untapped potential of unemployed and underemployed groups, to ensure that all skills training is tailor-made for groups in vulnerable situations, such as those not in education, employment of training, older workers, people with disabilities and third country nationals; further stresses the need to address skills mismatches and labour market shortages; underlines the need to ensure that workers are ready for and actively involved in the green and digital transitions, that they can benefit from opportunities for new employment or career progression and that training and education programmes are aligned with the needs of those undertaking them, the planet, the economy and the society of the future;

Removed6. Supports the increase of EU funds dedicated to social objectives and the promotion of future-oriented investments focused on the just green and digital transitions, with a strong social dimension, including gender equality and equal access to essential services, such as education, health and digital infrastructure; stresses that financial instruments at all levels must become less fragmented and more blended and bundled;

Added4. Highlights the need to consider improving access to quality employment in society, especially for those groups at higher risk of poverty and social exclusion in order to better design tailored activation and inclusion policies; calls on the Commission and the Member States to explore good practices from the many initiatives across the EU in tackling long-term unemployment, including local initiatives on the creation of jobs; stresses the importance of devoting particular attention to the younger generation, which still faces difficulties entering the labour market, and to children who are at a higher risk of falling into poverty and social exclusion; insists, in that respect, on the need to better assess the impact of current policies on job creation, competitiveness, economic growth and development, with the aim of enhancing Member States’ capacity to foster simultaneous upward social and economic convergence;

Removed7. Considers that EU fiscal rules should allow for the necessary public investment and financing of the just transition to a zero-carbon economy, as well as for the proper implementation of the principles of the EPSR and of social investments; stresses that, although there is a need to reduce public debt within a reasonable time frame, smaller or more indebted Member States need more flexible individual adjustment paths that allow them enough fiscal space to undertake the investments and reforms needed for socially fair green and digital transitions in a way that leaves no one behind;

Added5. Considers that further EU action is needed to protect workers in jobs undergoing industrial transformation and ensure a decent level of income, including an EU directive on adequate minimum incomes that could contribute to the goal of substantially reducing poverty in all Member States by 2030 and ensure the integration of people absent from the labour market, with decisive measures to address the social dimension of the cost-of-living crisis, including issues around housing; calls for the strengthening of gender-sensitive policies to tackle gender inequality and to contribute to the inclusion of women in the green and digital sectors through measures going beyond training or pay, including measures to improve mental health and work–life balance; calls for the introduction of a European framework to promote upward convergence on wages, defining a path towards equal pay for work of equal value and guaranteeing a swift and ambitious transposition and implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive at national level together with a re-valuation of work predominantly done by women;

Removed8. Reminds the Member States of their commitment to undertake reforms and make investments that have a social impact and contribute to the EU’s economic, social and territorial cohesion and sustainable and inclusive growth, as well as contribute to the implementation of the EPSR through their national recovery and resilience plans; calls, in this sense, for a mainstreaming of the EPSR in all EU funds through the introduction of social conditionality in their allocation rules, as part of the Financial Regulation covering the EU general budget;

Added6. Recalls that the creation of good-quality jobs and the implementation of retention strategies are the best ways to attract a skilled workforce and calls on employers to invest in their workers, and therefore suggests that employers create such conditions if they encounter recruitment difficulties; highlights that recruitment difficulties and labour shortages particularly prevalent in sectors with challenging working conditions and poor job quality could be resolved by offering decent jobs with adequate wages and working conditions; highlights that creating high-quality, well-paid jobs that improve quality of life is therefore crucial; highlights that of the 11 groups of workers identified by Eurofoundin its policy brief of 10 October 2023 as being essential to the functioning of critical services during the COVID-19 pandemic, six experienced poorer than average job quality, with health and care workers being exposed to the poorest job quality overall; underlines the need to strengthen and facilitate the recognition of skills and qualifications in the Union, including of non-EU nationals, who should be integrated into the labour market while further ensuring fair working conditions; stresses the need for Member States to rapidly and effectively ensure a decent standard of living, reduce in-work poverty and promote social cohesion; stresses the need for Member States to swiftly implement the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive;

Removed9. Takes note of the Commission’s proposals for new regulations within the revision of the economic governance framework of April 2023 to strengthen debt sustainability and enhance sustainable and inclusive growth through investment and reforms, including fiscal adjustment paths that allow for social investment; calls on the Commission to assess which expenditures and investments are necessary to achieve the long-term socioeconomic objectives required to comply with milestones in the national recovery and resilience plans; calls on the Commission to propose a new system for excessive deficit calculations based on this assessment in order to increase fairness during the green and digital transitions, social resilience and the implementation of the EPSR, while ensuring the sustainability of public finances in the Member States;

Added7. Supports the increase of EU funds dedicated to social objectives and the promotion of future-oriented investments focused on the just green and digital transitions, while achieving synergies among different relevant EU funds, with a strong social dimension, including gender equality, equal opportunities for groups at higher risk of poverty and social exclusion and equal access to social protection and essential services, such as education, healthcare, affordable housing and digital infrastructure; stresses that financial instruments at all levels must become more blended and bundled and less fragmented, and their management less bureaucratic;

Removed10. Calls on the Commission to develop an economic governance architecture in the EU based on transparency, accountability, solidarity, integration, social justice, convergence, gender equality, high-quality public services, including a quality public education system for all, quality employment and sustainable development;

Added8. Recalls the need for technical support, in particular for SMEs and start-ups, for training and recruitment of new skilled and qualified employees, in line with national policies and capacities, and for EU funding initiatives that, among other things, contribute to regulatory simplification and support long-term sustainable industrial growth and development, while better reflecting a focus on workers and quality jobs, ensuring environmental justice and territorial cohesion and mainstreaming gender-equality;

Removed11. Welcomes the fact that, in order to promote upward social convergence, the multilateral surveillance procedure set out in Article 148(4) TFEU has been, for the first time, complemented by an early warning system within the European Semester through a social convergence framework that could encourage the correction of risks to social convergence identified through the Social Scoreboard headline indicators and through social convergence reports published by the Commission; highlights the importance of including social divergence risks in the country-specific recommendations, especially those risks that concern people’s early development and that can have long-lasting consequences for individuals, such as equal access to quality education and healthcare, and highlights the importance of taking them into account when defining fiscal adjustment paths;

Added9. Considers that EU fiscal rules should allow for the necessary reforms, public investment in and financing of the digital and just transition towards a zero-carbon economy, as well as for the proper implementation of the principles of the EPSR and of social investments; calls for the further mainstreaming of the principles of the EPSR in economic and budgetary policies and calls on the Commission to further promote the more systematic use of distributional impact assessment in the planning and budgeting of reforms; emphasises that, while there is a need to reduce public debt within a reasonable time frame as required by Stability and Growth Pact, smaller or more indebted Member States need more flexible individual adjustment paths that allow them enough fiscal space to undertake the investments and reforms needed for socially fair green and digital transitions in a way that leaves no one behind;

Removed12. Calls for a more democratic European Semester process, with Parliament closely involved in setting macroeconomic and social policy priorities, in particular; considers that a revised European Semester process should follow the ordinary legislative procedure and so be agreed on between the Council and Parliament;

Added10. Reminds the Member States of their commitment to undertake reforms and make investments that have a social impact and contribute to the EU’s economic, social and territorial cohesion and sustainable and inclusive growth and development, as well as contribute to the implementation of the EPSR through their national recovery and resilience plans, their future medium-term fiscal-structural plans, and national action plans for the implementation of the EU Child Guarantee; stresses that the cost of living crisis makes the national-level implementation Child Guarantee, the reinforced Youth Guarantee and the EU disability rights strategy even more important; calls on the Member States to swiftly implement their national action plans on the EU Child Guarantee and to ensure the availability of affordable, accessible and high-quality social services, such as early childhood education and care, out-of-school care, education, vocational training, housing, and health and long-term care, as a necessary condition for ensuring equality, and to pay particular attention to addressing all vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities, migrants, ethnic minorities including Roma, and homeless people;

Removed13. Reconfirms the role of social partners in strengthening social dialogue and considers that the revision of the European Semester process should promote further dialogue with the relevant stakeholders, in particular relevant social partners and civil society organisations, on the main policy issues where appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of the TFEU and national legal and political arrangements;

Added11. Calls for the mainstreaming of the EPSR in all relevant EU funds through the introduction of social conditionality in their allocation rules, as part of the Financial Regulation covering the EU general budget; calls on the Commission to explore a possible revision of the Public Procurement Directive to further strengthen the social clause and to align it with the Union’s upcoming rules on due diligence, while ensuring that benefiting companies and sub-contractors support collective bargaining and respect workers’ rights; urges the Commission to promote collective bargaining, democracy at work, and social dialogue through the European Semester, and specifically in the country-specific recommendations, in order to ensure decent wages through collective bargaining;

Added12. Takes note of the Commission’s proposals for new regulations within the revision of the economic governance framework of April 2023 to strengthen debt sustainability and its reduction and enhance sustainable and inclusive economic growth through investment and reforms, including fiscal adjustment paths that allow for social investment; calls on the Commission to assess which expenditures, reforms and investments are necessary to achieve the long-term socioeconomic objectives required to comply with common EU priorities defined in the revised economic governance framework, as well as milestones in the national recovery and resilience plans, and required to implement country-specific recommendations as well as future medium-term fiscal structural plans; calls on the Commission to propose a new system for excessive deficit calculations based on this assessment in order to increase fairness during the green and digital transitions, social resilience and the implementation of the EPSR, while ensuring the sustainability of public finances in the Member States;

Added13. Calls on the Commission to develop an economic governance architecture in the EU that equally reflects economic, social and environmental policies and objectives and is based on transparency, accountability, solidarity, integration, social justice, fair distribution of wealth, convergence, gender equality, high-quality public and social services, including quality public education and training systems, especially vocational training accessible to all, quality employment and sustainable development; highlights that regional and local dimensions are key factors in this new economic governance architecture and reiterates the role of regional innovation partnerships in ensuring territorial cohesion;

Added14. Welcomes the fact that, in order to promote upward social convergence, the multilateral surveillance procedure set out in Article 148(4) TFEU has been, for the first time, complemented by an early warning system within the European Semester through a social convergence framework that could encourage the correction of risks to social convergence identified through the Social Scoreboard headline indicators and through social convergence reports published by the Commission; stresses the importance of integrating the Social Convergence Framework in the European Semester as from the 2025 cycle onwards, avoiding short-termism; highlights the importance of including social divergence risks in the country-specific recommendations, especially those risks that concern people’s early development and that can have long-lasting consequences for individuals, such as equal access to quality education and care, as well as healthcare, and highlights the importance of taking them into account when defining fiscal adjustment paths and medium-term fiscal-structural plans; considers it imperative that Member States maintain flexibility in their budgetary and policy decisions in order to accommodate the diverse socio-economic conditions and unique challenges faced by each Member State while ensuring that decisions take into account the specificities at national, regional or local level;

Added15. Calls for a revised and more democratic European Semester process, with an enhanced role for Parliament in designing macroeconomic and social policy priorities and monitoring their implementation, in particular among low-income and rural populations; highlights the importance for Parliament being duly involved in a regular and structured way in the European Semester in order to increase transparency, democratic accountability, including regarding national medium-term fiscal-structural plans, and especially concerning the evaluation of the country-specific recommendations and social convergence risks, and the progress towards the implementation of the principles of the EPSR; calls on the Commission to set quality standards for stakeholder consultation in the regulation, explicitly including civil society and social economy actors; calls for increased cooperation between Parliament’s lead committees and highlights the possibility of creating a special working group in Parliament that should ensure dialogue with representatives of Member States, regional and local authorities as well as stakeholders in order to increase the transparency of and accountability for decisions on macroeconomic and social policy priorities; calls on the Commission to advance the EU social taxonomy;

Added16. Reconfirms the role of social partners in strengthening social dialogue and considers that the revision of the European Semester process should promote transparency and further structured and meaningful dialogue with the relevant stakeholders, in particular relevant social partners and civil society organisations, on the main policy issues where appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of the TFEU and national legal and political arrangements; highlights the need to closely involve trade unions and workers’ representatives in order to ensure efficient and fair transitions and calls on the Member States to remove any national legislation that hampers collective bargaining;

17. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.