CHAPTER III (24 – 29)

SOCIAL PROTECTION AND INCLUSION

  • Ensuring full social protection and access to affordable and quality public services. Building further on the Council Recommendation on Access to Social Protection in a next EU-legislature, in order to improve the coverage of non-standard workforce by social protection systems. Taking actions to enhance the monitoring of the 2019 Recommendation, including a European network of national social security institutions.
  • Enhancing robust social protection systems, universal, effective and adequate, able to provide a decent standard of living for people encountering social risks such as old age, sickness, unemployment, etc. as a key component of the European social market economy and the European social welfare state.
  • Endorsing the recommendations of the High Level Group Report on the Future of Social Protection and the welfare States in the EU as per the commitment undertaken with the Action Plan for the implementation of the EPSR: stimulating the debate for policy revision consistent with the Report recommendations among member states, identifying the areas for possible concrete actions at national level; enhancing the role of the EU for upward convergence in targeted areas the Report suggests.
  • Developing highly efficient, reliable and monitored social protection systems, that should guarantee the rights of workers as per the EPSR within a given member state as well as in a cross-border dimension; enhancing the digitalization of the social security systems in order to improve transparency, certainty, monitoring and legality of social security operations both internally and cross-border.
  • Building further on the 2019 Council Recommendation on Access to Social Protection in a next EU-legislature: calling on member states to engage in substantial reforms to ensure both formal and effective coverage of workers and the self-employed through adequate and transparent social protection schemes; improving access , effectiveness and adequacy of social protection of non-standard workforce by filling systems’ gaps; addressing the existing weaknesses in formal coverage for the self-employed by promoting the evolution of the voluntary approach towards a mandatory one , which would address wider consequences of their lack of access to schemes for the functioning of labour markets, the stabilisation capacity of welfare systems and their funding.
  • Building on the Minimum Income Recommendation: assessing its effectiveness and its societal impact within MS; introducing a directive to define common EU standards for minimum income schemes and increase their adequacy, effectiveness, take-up rate and coverage, with specific, to cope with the anti-poverty strategy, in view of achieving the Porto Headline Target on Poverty reduction.
  • Enhancing the effective and the upward convergence in the implementation of the recommendation on affordable high-quality long-term care.
  • Taking actions to enhance the monitoring of the Recommendations, including a European network of national social security institutions; further developing qualitative and quantitative indicators verifying the effective implementation of the recommendation, both in the context of the monitoring framework, and by putting forward new initiatives;
  • Enhancing the role of Trade Unions in the monitoring of the Recommendations and policy developments in the area of social protection: envisaging a tri-annual flagship report, based on the contribution of MS social protection institutions and of social partners, written by the Social Protection Committee and the European Commission, in order to give visibility to trends in social protection systems across the EU, including the progress in the implementation of the recommendations of the HLG Report on the Future of Welfare;
  • Guaranteeing universal rights-based access to high-quality public services, including childcare and transport. Taking actions to ensure the full respect for the right to adequate, decent and affordable housing. Guaranteeing quality services and a right for workers to provide quality services.
  • Promoting a rights-based approach and public investment in universal, solidarity-based and gender-responsive social protection systems at international, European and national levels. Pursuing 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.
  • Building on the positive experience of SURE, introducing an initiative to develop an EU instrument focusing on job retention schemes, with a common approach to active labour market policies, and designing permanent EU stabilisers/reinsurance of government’s expenditure on employment and social protection. SURE’s scope should be expanded to help workers and companies to adopt just transition measures, and the coverage of such measure enlarged to all categories of non-standard, self-employed, precarious workers.
  • Strongly anchoring the objective to reduce the gender pension gap to the Gender Equality Strategy post-2025.
  • Building on the Minimum Income Recommendation, introducing a directive to define common EU standards for minimum income schemes, to cope with the anti-poverty strategy, in view of achieving the Porto Headline Target on Poverty reduction.