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The European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs committee introduced some budgetary proposals regarding social policy for the EU budget 2024, including both financial figures to the Council’s position as well as pilot projects.
Such proposals, in the form of amendments, included those coming from four political groups – the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew, and the Left. The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), loyal to their principle of reducing public subsidies and debt, did not propose any taxpayers’ money increase for so-called social issues.
The EPP proposal was relatively modest: 3.3 million EUR for the promotion of European social dialogue. The term “European social dialogue” includes both collective action by national social partners as well as EU cross-industry social partners.
This difference has its importance, as he ECR defends social dialogue to take place at national level. The EPP, in line with the left-wing groups, is ready to grant further means for the promotion of social dialogue at EU level. The ECR would be ready to guarantee the role of social partners at national level, but opposing any budget increase to facilitate transfer of collective action from Member States to Brussels.
The social budget expansion coming from the S&D group totaled 5.4 million EUR, plus a significant increase of permanent staff in the European Labour Authority (ELA).
Out of those 5.4 million EUR, 3.3 million are dedicated to three pilot projects: 1.5 million to encourage young Europeans’ emotional intelligence (a peculiar one indeed), 1 million to protect mobile migrant labour in the EU through trade union action, and 0.8 million to study local and regional models tackling long-term unemployment.
On top of pilot projects, the S&D proposed a 1.1 million EUR growth in the budget of the European Labour Authority (ELA), plus a further 1 million EUR increase in favour of workers’ organisations.
More important than all of that, Socialists desire to increase the ELA staff with new 15 permanent workers. This is coherent with their will to grant new competences to that EU agency. So far, the ELA has only been competent to consult on the mobility of EU workers. The left-wing groups, together with the EPP, want to enlarge ELA’s remit to give this tentacle of the Commission inspection and sanctioning powers.
The Renew group used to have a small government strategy, but that was only in the past. Nowadays, it supports welfare state and big spending. In fact, it is the second group, after the Left, having proposed higher increases to the EU 2024 social budget.
Its number one flagship commitment is a massive 5 billion EUR increase in the European Child Guarantee, a programme subsidising vulnerable children and their families through funds allocated to NGOs. The ECR does not support such increase, as we do not even know how efficiently the original funding of the former European Child Guarantee has been managed.
Furthermore, the centre parliamentary group proposes to dedicate 26.5 million to create the Net Zero Industry Academies, that is, new education centres to promote the green and digital technologies fostered by the current European Commission. The ECR has also shown criticism to such initiative, as education is a Member State competence and should be freely implemented by national universities rather than those “EU Academies”.
Together with the two mentioned larger items, Renew proposed a pilot project of 3.8 million EUR to analyse the building of a European network of national energy poverty observatories, and another more modest pilot project of 1 million EUR for the labour integration of drug users.
Finally, the Left proposed a huge 8.4 billion increase in the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) for public subsidies, precisely the wrong social policy in the opinion of the ECR, who would incentivise market opportunities and economic prosperity as the best strategy possible.
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