Debate: Reversing the negative social consequences of the COVID- pandemic
Date: WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2021
Speaker: Nicolas Schmit
Language: EN

While the EU and national action has significantly cushioned the social impact of the pandemic, vulnerable groups have indeed been hit disproportionately, highlighting the need to have adequate and well-performing social protection systems. As we want to rebuild in a more sustainable and resilient way we need to ensure that the recovery is fair and inclusive. The European Pillar of Social Rights is our guiding compass in this endeavour.  I remember the new headline targets for 2030 on employment, adult learning and poverty reduction, and I try to mention a certain number of measures which show that we had in mind precisely more vulnerable groups, and among the vulnerable groups are women, because the majority of the frontline workers were women. In spite of that, and this has been recalled this morning by the President, they are underpaid, badly paid, their work is not recognised as it should be, and therefore we have made a proposal on pay transparency, because applauding the frontline workers, applauding the women who every day try to secure our health system, is not enough.  The second one is the young – especially the young – and this was also mentioned this morning by the President, with a new initiative especially addressing the difficult situation of the less-favoured young – those who might not be at university, not in apprenticeships, who might be unemployed, very often the so-called NEETs – to give them new opportunities, and therefore we have launched a strengthened, a better Youth Guarantee, which addresses particularly their problems and helps to bring them back into the labour market and bring them back also for being skilled.  A European Child Guarantee. This now has to be implemented. This is crucial because we know that children have suffered a lot, especially disadvantaged or children from disadvantaged backgrounds, from this pandemic, and therefore it’s very important now to implement the Child Guarantee swiftly also with the European funds which have been included in the ESF+. We have proposed a dynamic active labour market policy, which we call EASE, Effective Active Support to Employment, precisely to bring people back into a job in a job market, a labour market, which is changing, and now we discover there is unemployment, on the one hand, and there are a lot of shortages on the labour market in some countries, so we have really to help people and especially also young people, vulnerable workers, to find a job, and here active labour market policies through reskilling, job-to-job transition and hiring incentives are extremely important. Next. Occupational safety and health strategy to protect workers because we all know that one of the places with the highest risk is the working place, and the directive on adequate minimum wages is also a way to value work and help those who cannot make a decent living out of their work and their wage.  We will continue on that. We will work on the minimum income recommendation. We will also try to have an initiative on distributional impact assessment of the RRF, but also in the context of the Fit for 55. Question number 2, the data. Yes, I agree, we need the right data, we need better data, we need more precise data, to have an evidence-based policy, and this means that we have to work on and improve also the collection of data with Eurostat and the Member States, and the regional dimension in that context is also very important.  On the RRF. I think this is a major achievement and this has been very much underlined this morning by the President, and here also it is clear that Member States have understood that the RRF is an extremely important tool to improve social conditions because the consequence of the pandemic has been economic, it has been financial, but it has also been mainly social, and therefore a lot of funding, about 30% of the funds of the RRF, are allocated to social objectives, these being education, health, bringing people back into jobs. All this is extremely important. So I think we will monitor this, obviously, we will see what will be the impact of using the RRF money.  The money is certainly in the ESF+, precisely focused also on vulnerable groups, but also in InvestEU. We have EUR 2.8 billion for InvestEU. We have to promote social investment. This goes along with reforms, this goes along with structural reforms, and therefore we need better instruments precisely to foster and to promote this social investment.  SURE has been mentioned. Yes, SURE is a big success. We have helped a lot of people to keep their jobs. We talk about 30 million. But what for me is very important is that through the SURE instrument we did not just innovate – because it’s the first time social bonds of some kind were created – but we helped all the countries, all the Member States, to introduce a short-time work scheme, which they did. Every Member State introduced a short-time work scheme, so there was not this kind of inequality – some doing it, some not being able for financial reasons to do it – and this kept Europe together and improved the situation of our labour market Europe-wide.  Certainly, we will continue evaluating SURE, 94% of the money has been allocated. Now we look at how it has been used and certainly in September we will come back with a new report on the impact and also the way how SURE has been implemented.  Skills are key. We are in a changing world and this has been accelerated by the pandemic. We have seen digitalisation everywhere, so skills shortages are very much on the digital side and therefore this Commission has pushed very much on skills, on the skills side, with the European Skills Agenda, with a pact for skills. Now we will make a proposal on individual learning accounts, and what is also important is the Porto objective – 60% of all workers should be part every year of a lifelong learning scheme, and especially I insist on those with the lowest level of skills because their jobs are the most threatened.  Finally, further work with Member States since the very onset of the coronavirus virus outbreak. The Commission has coordinated a common European crisis response. We have to come back to the Semester. We have to really follow up on what has been decided. We have to analyse the shortcomings in the Member States as a consequence of the coronavirus crisis, because we all know that even if this pandemic will end, hopefully soon, we will have the scars of this pandemic. So we have to continue working on these scars through very effective measures.