Leading members of the S&D group today welcomed a European Parliament’s employment and social affairs committee vote to strengthen social aspects of economic governance reform.

Said Pervenche Berès, chair of the employment and social affairs committee and author of a parliamentary report: « Strengthening economic governance is not an end in itself. It must serve the aims we set in the EU 2020 strategy on employment and fighting social exclusion.

« This requires social issues to be taken into account from the outset when monitoring potential imbalances, as well as later, when shaping reforms to address these imbalances ».

Said S&D vice-president in charge of economic and monetary affairs, Stephen Hughes: « This vote opens the way to a new balance in favour of growth, jobs and convergence of European economies.

« We call on the economic and monetary affairs committee, which is the leading committee in the negotiations, to take this fully into account ».

The main improvements to the Commission proposal adopted by the employment and social affairs committee are:

– a clear reference to employment policies with the addition of article 148 of the Lisbon Treaty to the legal basis;

– a clear reference to the horizontal social clause contained in article 9 of the Lisbon treaty;

– the association of the employment and social affairs branch of the Council to the imbalances procedure;

– the introduction of social indicators in the scoreboard supposed to monitor imbalances;

– the allocation of the revenue collected from fines to the financial stability mechanism and to socially and environmentally sustainable investment;

– the replacement of the unclear notion of « prudent » by « efficient and sustainable fiscal policy making ».

The European Parliament’s competences in this new governance architecture have also been reinforced.