Principle 11

The majority of Member States underperformed in the EU2020 and Barcelona Objectives. Public investments in this field are decreasing instead of increasing. Poverty among children and opportunities for children strongly rely on the income and social assets of the household they grow up in. It is also important to ensure access to high quality and accessible childcare, together with access to quality education, leisure facilities and health care in order to allow children to fully develop their personality and talents and also workers, particularly women, to be able to fully participate in the labour market, and in the long-term increased equality in society.

A child guarantee should cover all children without exception, and should encompass free access to education, child care, educational leisure, health care, housing and nutrition of high quality. The EU should reinforce the universality – and quality – of public services, which also benefits vulnerable children and their families. The child guarantee should be a way to achieve full application of the UNCRC, universality being a key principle. The Barcelona targets should be updated and fostered.

As regards childcare facilities, these must be accessible (geographically and for children with disabilities), affordable and of high quality.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. Anti-Poverty Action Plan with specific focus on: (i) Ensuring accessible, free and quality public services, including social services and childcare facilities; (ii) Access to quality education for all children; (iii) Addressing household poverty
2. Fulfil social partners demands for public investment in care facilities for children and collective bargaining potential to meet the specific needs of working parents.

Principle 12

The impact assessment of the proposal for a Recommendation on Access to Social Protection aptly describes the challenges behind Principle 12. ETUC made a case for social protection in the 2019 EU Semester providing evidence of the biased approach of the EU, which takes sustainability of national systems as the main, and often, only, policy objective of country specific recommendations.

In four years’ time, an impact assessment should draw conclusions on whether a Recommendation is the appropriate tool to obtain this objective or whether a Directive would be more suitable.

Access to social protection is strongly correlated with quality of employment. That is why this principle will need to be consistent with Principle 5. As regards social protection, the following items should be monitored:

• coverage and adequacy of social protection benefits, irrespective of the form of employment;
• guarantee of effective minimum protection for all;
• the balance trade-off between employment flexibility features and access, duration and level of social protection benefits;
• the employment levels of the workforce;
• set adequate benefits (especially for pensions);
• improve access to training for workers;
• effective work-life balance instruments;
• ensure access to health care and prevent injuries at work.
• gaps due to professional careers, in case of long periods of unemployment, especially gaps that are gender-based or age-based, or stemming from precarious forms of employment.

Other elements can be investigated through social dialogue, such as the future of work, including protection against unfair dismissals, the right to full-time employment and working time sovereignty.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. Social Protection Scoreboard – Upward convergence with targets, as part of the Quality Jobs Programme.

Principle 13

The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) tends to reduce the adequacy and coverage of unemployment benefits schemes in favour of balancing government budgets, but to the detriment of workers’ protection. Unemployment benefits have nevertheless decreased (replacement ratio, or duration of the benefits, obligations of the beneficiary not linked to participation in ALMP, etc.). The objective of aligning it to a greater extent with Active Labour Market Policies remains valid for a few countries. It is dependent on national models and the EU does not harmonise the performance of activation measures. The consequences of this can be seen in national accounts and poverty rates as part of the benchmarking process within the EU Semester.

An EU initiative on free movement of workers and the portability of rights in labour market transitions may trigger convergence in the field of workers’ rights to adequate unemployment benefits and/or activation measures to transition from unemployment to employment, or from temporary to standard employment contracts.

The European Commission is working on a proposal for a European Unemployment Benefit Reinsurance scheme. It will likely be conceived as an instrument of fiscal stability rather than a labour market instrument, with the unwanted consequence that sustainability will be more relevant than adequacy of performance. The Reinsurance Scheme should not interfere with the rules and practices of national systems or serve as a new instrument for disciplining Member States and/or harmonising national systems for unemployment insurance. A European unemployment reinsurance scheme could contribute to ensure a basic standard of support during unemployment cycles. The idea of establishing EURS was already discussed before the Covid-19 outbreak, yet the economic and social consequences of the pandemic are making the discussion of such an instrument all the more necessary. It must be made clear that SURE does not substitute the need for a discussion on a more permanent scheme.

Regarding benchmarking within the European Semester, more emphasis could be placed on young workers that are particularly affected by precariousness at the beginning of their career path and who are sometimes penalised even more within the existing national unemployment benefit scheme or even ignored. The same may apply to workers aged between 52 and 67. The question of penalties also seems relevant in view of the structural reforms spreading across Europe to reduce job seeker access to unemployment benefit schemes or to create more precariousness among job seekers through the prism of austerity. Furthermore, the growing tendency, in some Member States, of rendering job seekers “invisible” in order to serve short-term political gains – starting with young NEETs – should also be addressed.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. Benchmarking systems for indicators: long-term unemployment and government expenditure for ALMP.
2. The European Employment Strategy and the European Network of Public Employment Services should be further developed.
3. Development of indicators and benchmarks that drive upward convergence in performance of unemployment benefit schemes, in support of the establishment of minimum standards and safeguarding features for national systems.

Principle 14

The EU exhibits improvements only in combating absolute poverty (material deprivation). However, efforts are not being undertaken to keep people out of poverty or social exclusion: in-work poverty is increasing. The majority of minimum income schemes across the EU are far from providing sufficient coverage, duration and adequacy of benefits. This is resulting in growing social divisions and labour market and economic disruptions.

ETUC believes that European citizens should also have the right to receive a guaranteed minimum income across all ages. This can be achieved through a combination of social protection tools and public investments in training for unemployed people with public employment services and activation policies that help every single person in the EU who is at risk of poverty or of social exclusion. EU standards for a minimum income cannot be seen as a disincentive to work.

Minimum income schemes must guarantee sufficient income to meet the essential needs of people and their dependents and be highly inclusive and accessible; for those able to work, they must be combined with a series of services and embedded within a broader EU and national policy response to active inclusion. The recently adopted Council conclusions on minimum income schemes empower the EC to reinforce the EU framework to combat poverty and social exclusion.  A legislative proposal in this field should ensure equivalent performance of national systems without altering their features, provided that the system ensures outcomes aligned to European standards. The ETUC demands that a binding initiative such as a European framework Directive establishes common principles, definitions and minimum standards to grant this right across the EU. In many countries, trade unions are key players in the management of social security bodies, often with joint-body entities, and through collectively bargained tools for social inclusion and protection of vulnerable categories. This is an asset that any EU initiative should build upon and accentuate and not threaten with undesired harmonizing legal frameworks.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. Creating connections with SDG 1 and Anti-Poverty Action Plan as in Principle 11.
2. Elaborate a Social Dialogue framework for social partners and governments to assess coverage, adequacy and effectiveness of Minimum Income Schemes in combination with social benefit and activation policies.

Principle 15

The needs of an ageing population should be better understood, and solutions found to ensure assistance for older people, adequate pensions, good health and social care and safety nets. Comprehensive social protection systems cannot be built through legislation alone. They need financial resources and a commitment from Member States to make the necessary funds available to move forward in implementing the EPSR. Within this context, the role of the EU is crucial to ensure that people reach the end of their professional careers in good health and with sufficient resources – guaranteed primarily by strong statutory pension systems – to enjoy a dignified retirement. Workers employed in arduous activities need particular rules within the broad sphere of pension schemes in order to ensure good health in retirement and adequate income at pension age.

In the EU Semester pensions are still treated as purely fiscal sustainability issues rather than social demands linked to demographic challenges. Coverage, quality, and access have suffered as a result of cuts to public expenditure, dismantling of collective risk-sharing and marketisation often prescribed by Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs).

The adequacy of social protection benefits must be ensured by statutory public and collective systems for all workers and self-employed. Fiscal objectives should be compatible with decent living conditions for elderly people. The Council Recommendation on Access to Social Protection should be supported and implemented. Progress should be monitored for workers and self-employed. A set of indicators should be introduced, within the framework of closer cooperation between Member States, to find alternatives to raising the retirement age and to make prolonged careers workable. Efforts should be made to create more and better jobs across all ages, to strengthen first pillar pensions, ensuring universal coverage and adequacy in all Member States, and to support European and national-level coordination for the development of occupational pensions based on collective agreements and as a voluntary supplement to a stronger public pensions system.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. Introduce an “adequacy” indicator that establishes Medium Term Budgetary Objectives for the Member States and monitoring quality of life of old-age people.
2. Linking fiscal sustainability and adequacy of pensions with labour market performance, employment dependency ratio, quality of work and remuneration, fairness of contributory obligation between employers and workers, gender pay and pension gap.
3. Monitoring evidence concerning demographic, migration and retirement trends for different categories of workers, including those performing arduous jobs.
4. Anti-Poverty Action Programme as in Principle 11.

Principle 16

Health care workers across Europe are working hard to treat and stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In many cases, their task is made harder because of staff shortages, inadequate facilities and lack of personal protective equipment and testing kits. The European governing bodies and national governments should take immediate measures to ensure that health services receive much needed emergency funding and to boost staffing levels in the short term. The European Semester is addressing sustainability and accessibility to health services. Austerity measures have drastically reduced the scope of public services and their accessibility. At the start of the 2019 Semester, ETUC stated that health care and long-term care systems were a source of huge concern and suffering for a growing proportion of the EU’s population, and require immediate action. More than 15 Member States show very poor performance in health care. Coverage and access to long-term care is insufficient in several Member States. Informal care dominates the sector, to the detriment of services and female participation in the labour market. While public structures are often lacking, private options are extremely costly, inaccessible, and often lead to a deterioration in services as well as working conditions in the health sector. No substantial investments were contemplated in the past Semester cycle. In the medium and longer term, increased public spending on health and increased investment in public health are crucial, not just to reverse years of underspending in many countries but also to ensure that health staff and facilities can cope with future demands. Europe had a shortfall of around one million health workers even before the COVID-19 outbreak. Governments need to radically change their approach to public health and public services: short-term contracts and precarious jobs in the health sector are not enough to tackle emergencies such as this.

Access to health services and to long-term care is an EU emergency. The EU Semester cycle promoted “rationalisation” and “cost-efficiency”, implying aggregation of structures, a shift in already allocated resources, de-hospitalisation of care, but almost never public investment in necessary personnel and services. Out-of-pocket expenditure for health is on the increase in many Member States. SGP rules have extended the scope of the private market supplying health services and insurance to people. This reduces access to health services, which is one of the main reasons for discontent among the population.

The care sector is crucial to ensuring a decent standard of living for elderly people. It is necessary to improve the attractiveness of the sector in order to raise the quality of the work and services supplied. There is a high incidence of migrants, undeclared and undocumented workers in the sector, especially female migrants. It is important to eliminate all areas of vulnerability for people working in this sector and give workers the opportunity to improve their skills and their working conditions for their own benefit as well as the benefit of users.

The EU should push for a rights-based approach and public investment in universal, solidarity-based and gender-responsive social protection systems at international, European and national levels. It should also pursue upward convergence goals and funding allocation in child, health, elderly, long-term, disability and dependency care in order to guarantee universal coverage and high-quality care.

In order to meet the current and future needs of an ageing population, greater expenditure on universally accessible, affordable and good-quality public services for health and long-term care must be undertaken and viewed as an investment. Preventive care must be enhanced through proper policies and funding. Professional development, training, education and career recognition are crucial in order to improve quality and coverage of care and provide quality job opportunities. Work-life balance policies should support workers with care responsibilities. The EU should introduce an EU Right2Care backed with national action plans.

Actions aimed at establishing upward convergence in living and working conditions

1. EU Right2Care programme, backed with national action plans through the European Semester, based on transparent and ambitious objectives
2. Monitoring capacity, functioning and impact of occupational welfare (in national systems, and the role of collective bargaining).
3. EU initiatives to strengthen the resilience of publicly-funded, universal and accessible healthcare systems.