Employment and Social Affairs Informal Council, Varese, Italy, 11-12 July 2003
Date: 10-7-2003
The Informal meeting of EU Ministers for Employment and Social Policy takes place on 11 and 12 July 2003. The Commission will be represented by the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Anna Diamantopoulou. The Italian Presidency has tabled two issues for discussion: "Labour market policies and undeclared work in the European Employment Strategy (EES)" and "Streamlining the social dimension of the Lisbon Strategy: new scenarios for Europe". The Italian Presidency is proposing to have Council Conclusions on both these issues during its Presidency.
In addition to EU ministers of Employment and Social Affairs, the plenary session will be attended by the ministers of the 10 accession countries, plus representatives of a number of other European countries. The Italian Presidency has also invited Mr Wim Kok, chairman of the Employment task force set up by the European Council in March of this year. The task force will deliver a report on the implementation of the Employment Strategy in November of this year, which will feed into the joint Commission/Council Employment report. Mr Kok's presence at the meeting will allow ministers to present their views on the employment situation and the possibilities for sharpening the implementation of the strategy. The full day meeting on 11 July will, as is customary, be preceded by a preparatory meeting between the troika of Ministers, the Commissioner, a representative of the European Parliament, the Social Partners and NGOs.
Undeclared work
As a part of the newly adopted revised Employment Package, a specific employment guideline on undeclared work was included.
Undeclared work has strong implications for the functioning of our economy and the labour market in particular, as it affects workers, businesses and consumers. Available figures show that it amounts to between 7 per cent and 19 per cent of the volume of total declared employment in the current 15 Member States. Undeclared workers take big health and safety risks and often have no social protection. Undeclared goods and services offer no guarantees to consumers and undeclared work distorts competition, is often associated with low quality and pay and undermines the financing and delivery of social protection and public services something which will become even more serious in the years to come because of the increasing pressure on our social protection systems.
Undeclared work will not disappear by itself. It will take a strong political commitment from Member States to develop and implement broad actions and measures to eliminate undeclared work. This includes strengthening incentives to declare work, through active labour market policy and facilitating easy access to the labour market and social protection systems.
Disincentives to declare work should be removed, poverty traps should be eliminated as far as possible and appropriate measures should be taken to make work pay. A good mix of preventive measures, awareness raising and sanctions, should be developed. Efforts should be taken at national and EU level to measure the extent of the problem and progress achieved.
This broad policy mix is reflected in the new Employment Guideline. It allows the Commission to monitor and report on policy developments in the context of the European Employment Strategy.
Streamlining of Social Protection
The central objective is to reinforce the social dimension of the Lisbon strategy by streamlining the current procedures at EU level (fight against poverty, pensions, health and making work pay). There are major potential gains which can flow from a streamlined approach - focussing on how to build greater coherence between the different policy fields within social protection systems and setting out political messages regarding how systems need to be modernised which can then be taken up in the overall follow-up of the Lisbon strategy.
There is also the question of increasing the consistency and coherence between the work on social protection and the other Lisbon related instruments, notably the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines and the Employment Strategy. The timing of the work on social protection should be synchronised with the other processes with a view to ensuring a dynamic interaction between economic, employment and social policy.
This is thus in short about reducing the amount of reports and simplifying the work so that all involved can focus on the setting of objectives and implementing policy and at the same time facilitating the interaction internally between the social processes and externally in relation to employment and economic affairs. By doing so, we will ensure effective implementation.