Common statement, Stand Up for the Social Pillar Alliance
Before the release of the release of the Action Plan for the Social Pillar by the Commission next May the 3rd, and in parallel to the informal meeting of Ministers of Labour and Social Affairs (EPSCO), the Stand Up for the Social Pillar Alliance publishes the following common statement.
The European Confederation of Industrial and Service Cooperatives, the European Trade Union Confederation, Social Economy Europe, the Social Platform, members of Alliance Stand Up for the European Pillar of Social Rights, jointly state:
The Alliance calls for an ambitious Action Plan implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). We believe that the EU’s recovery must be grounded in strong, sustainable and resilient economies flanked by social policies and services to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on our health, employment, economy, and on equality and democracy in our societies.
We are committed to the principles enshrined in the EPSR and call on our European and national institutions to deliver an ambitious Action Plan to fully implement them. This Plan must be based on the European values, principles and cornerstones of:
–Innovativeness and comprehensiveness: The Action Plan to implement the EPSR must lead to a higher quality of life for all, with new policies to bring social progress as well as a greener and more digital future.
– Promptness: The Action Plan should protect workers and enterprises that are suffering from the economic consequences of the pandemic crisis with the main aim of preserving jobs, including income of workers, self-employed and social entrepreneurs.
– Social ambition: The Action Plan should restore social and regional cohesion, fight inequalities, poverty and exclusion, lead fairer digital and green transitions, establish gender equality, ban discriminations and ensure equal opportunities for all. In the aftermath of the pandemic, it should rely on a job-rich recovery and lead to strengthened social protection systems that guarantee dignity to people of all ages.
– Social & economic well-being: The Action Plan should guide the use of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and shape a fairer and more equal post-Covid reaction. The RRF must fund actions that implement the EPSR and that relaunch the European project on the basis of thriving economies, advanced social models and wide-spread well-being.
– Investments & common good: We expect the Action Plan to promote public investments and to champion universal, effective, high quality and accessible public services, including health and care. It must stimulate private investors’ commitment to pursue the public good as well as tangible environmental, social and good governance progress. Enterprises of all sizes that can provide a high social return must be supported and rewarded – including the social economy and not-for-profit providers of social services, paying special attention to the collective and community dimensions and to socially relevant performances.
– Concreteness and tangibility: Actions aimed at recovery and social progress must be concrete and should therefore be measurable and accompanied by monitoring frameworks, jointly agreed among relevant stakeholders, encompassing the social, environmental and economic criteria.
Please find here the full statement, that has been sent today to the 27 Ministers of Labour and Social Affairs of the EU.
