MEPs welcome the Commission Communication to strengthen the social dimension of the EMU but regret that proposed indicators are insufficient to ensure a comprehensive coverage of the Member States employment and social situations. They call for the inclusion of supplementary indicators in the scoreboard such as child poverty, access to health care, homelessness and a decent work index.

 

« The issue of growing social divergences has to be addressed by building a genuine strong social pillar of the EMU. The communication should only be considered as a first step. More social indicators complementary to the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) are needed for the design of sound policies, the involvement of social partners should be strengthened and other ideas – concerning stabilisers for instance – should be explored rather than simply discarded at this stage » said Employment and Social Affairs Committee Chair and rapporteur Pervenche Berès (S&D, FR).

 

Towards a social pillar

The Employment committee invites the European Council of December to define concrete steps forward in terms of building a social pillar as part of the EMU.

The monitoring of employment and social developments could contribute to a better understanding, aim to reduce social divergences between Member States and prevent social dumping, MEPs stressed.

 

Involving Parliament and social partners

Parliament and social partners should be associated in the definition of employment and social indicators, underlines the committee.

MEPs also call for a more active role of social partners in the European Semester and regret the too formal nature of the macroeconomic dialogue.

MEPs also deplore the lack of the role and modalities of stabilizers in the Commission Communication.

 

Next steps

The resolution and the oral question will be debated and voted during the November plenary session