A more social Europe? This is the framework within which the European Commission’s proposal for a pillar of social rights is set, consisting of twenty key principles grouped into three areas: equal opportunities and access to the labor market, fair working conditions, and social protection and inclusion. Submitted as a recommendation, the Commission’s proposal does not have binding legal force.
The aim here is to encourage member states to adopt a number of principles and to promote the coordination of national policies. The pillar is primarily designed for eurozone countries as a “compass” to enable a return to the convergence process. Others are free to adopt it or will likely have to do so if they wish to join the monetary union.
By making the euro the primary criterion for its application, the Commission seems to prioritize its economic objectives over the social dimension. It is clear that excessive social imbalances, just like excessive economic imbalances, threaten the viability of the monetary union and the credibility of the European project.
However, while the macroeconomic reform process has already successfully absorbed social issues into its procedures in the name of strengthening budgetary discipline, one has the right to question whether the pillar is aimed at giving new legitimacy to the neoliberal recipes of the European “new economic governance” by adding new social indicators to its dashboard.
Furthermore, the pillar of social rights aims to make the rights and principles already present in the European social acquis “more visible, more comprehensible, and more explicit.”
From a symbolic point of view, the initiative gives substance to European citizenship, much like the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, but in the absence of legal obligation, the pillar risks being confined to a “re-packaging” of existing principles with no real effect.
Genuine progress or placebo effect, time will tell. But despite its apparent weakness, the pillar of social rights presents a considerable opportunity to expand the debate by putting forward other bold proposals for a “social Europe.”
The road is undoubtedly still long. But if politics is the art of the possible and of persuasion, the time has come to propose an ambitious social Europe.
