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DRAFT REPORT (2023/2116(INI))

On the European Semester for economic policy coordination: employment and social priorities for 2024

EMPL-PR-757055

Committee on Employment and Social Affairs · Rapporteur: Dragoş Pîslaru

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This is a draft report by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs on employment and social priorities for the 2024 European Semester. It calls for an inclusive green and digital transition, investment in skills and quality jobs, and a stronger social dimension in EU economic governance. It supports a social convergence framework, more EU funds for social objectives, and fiscal rules that allow social investment. It also asks for a more democratic Semester with Parliament closely involved and a greater role for social partners.

Committee position. The rapporteur proposes that Parliament stress the need for an inclusive green and digital transition, investment in skills and quality jobs, a social convergence framework, more EU funds for social objectives, fiscal rules allowing social investment, and a more democratic Semester with Parliament closely involved and a greater role for social partners.

Key points

  1. Sustainable growth should ensure an inclusive socio-ecological and digital transformation, fight poverty, reduce inequalities and create decent jobs with adequate wages and working conditions.
  2. Up-to-date monitoring of the labour market and skills supply and demand is needed at occupational, sectoral and regional level to identify and forecast skills needs.
  3. Significant investment in people and quality, inclusive, subsidised education and training is needed to address skills mismatches and labour shortages and prepare workers for the green and digital transitions.
  4. Tailored activation and inclusion policies should address poverty and social exclusion among certain groups, with particular attention to young people and children.
  5. Employers should invest in workers, as good-quality jobs and retention strategies attract skilled workers, especially in sectors with challenging working conditions.
  6. EU funds for social objectives should increase, with future-oriented investments in the just green and digital transitions, gender equality and equal access to essential services.
  7. EU fiscal rules should allow public investment for the just transition and the European Pillar of Social Rights, with more flexible adjustment paths for smaller or more indebted member states.
  8. Member states should undertake reforms and investments with social impact through their national recovery and resilience plans, and the European Pillar of Social Rights should be mainstreamed in all EU funds through social conditionality.
  9. The Commission should assess necessary expenditures for long-term socioeconomic objectives and propose a new system for excessive deficit calculations based on this assessment.
  10. The Commission should develop an economic governance architecture based on transparency, accountability, solidarity, integration, social justice, convergence, gender equality, high-quality public services and sustainable development.
  11. The new social convergence framework, complementing the multilateral surveillance procedure, should encourage correction of risks to social convergence and include social divergence risks in country-specific recommendations.
  12. The European Semester should be more democratic, with Parliament closely involved and the revised process following the ordinary legislative procedure, and should promote dialogue with social partners and civil society.

Who is affected

  • Member states, which should undertake reforms and investments with social impact and mainstream the European Pillar of Social Rights in EU funds.
  • Employers, who are called on to invest in their workers and create high-quality, well-paid jobs.
  • The Commission, which should assess expenditures, propose a new excessive deficit calculation system and develop an economic governance architecture.
  • Social partners and civil society organisations, which should be involved in dialogue on main policy issues.
  • Smaller or more indebted member states, which need more flexible individual adjustment paths for investments and reforms.

Figures and deadlines

  • Employment growth in the EU is projected at 1.0 % this year, easing to 0.4 % in both 2024 and 2025.
  • The unemployment rate in the EU is expected to remain broadly stable at 6.0 % in 2023 and 2024 and to edge down to 5.9 % in 2025.
  • Real wages in the EU decreased by 3.7 % in 2022.
  • The employment level is 74.6 %.
  • The EU headline target is 60 % of adults in learning every year by 2030, from a low level of 37.4 % in 2016.

Legal basis: Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union; Articles 9 and 149 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.