Debate: European Semester for economic policy coordination: annual sustainable growth survey  – European Semester for economic policy coordination: employment and social aspects in the annual sustainable growth strategy survey
Date: WEDNESDAY, 9 MARCH 2022
Speaker: Nicolas Schmit
Language: EN

I think we have learned a lesson from the COVID crisis that a strong economy can only be a resilient economy, an economy that adapts rapidly and that also creates the resources to respond to challenges. The big challenge we have now is certainly how we can stabilise the recovery. There will certainly be an impact on growth. There will be, or there might be, an impact on employment. Some weeks ago, we noticed that it was about job shortages, qualified labour shortages. Now, maybe, given the situation and given the increases in prices of energy and of food, we might again head for more difficulties on our labour markets. So we have to be ready to respond to that.  Therefore, the semester is an essential tool to have strong governance. This governance has to be economic, certainly, fiscal, yes, but also social. These are the two sides of the same coin if we want a resilient economy and a resilient society. It has been said that we now also need stability in our society. During the COVID crisis, the most vulnerable paid a high price and we have to avoid the price of this terrible war being borne by the most vulnerable.  First, on refugees, I think here there is a need for very, very strong and rapid solidarity. We do not know the numbers. It has been said that it’s about two million today and there might be seven, eight or more million people who have to be received and welcomed, and who have to get all the support they need, especially in those Member States who are the ‘frontline’ Member States. The Commission yesterday adopted a package, as a first step, with the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, of EUR 400 million, and with REACT-EU, which can make available about EUR 10 billion which, in a very flexible way, can be devoted to taking care of the people arriving. We have a proposal on a new system, which is similar to the coronavirus response investment initiative (CRII) system, and which we call ‘cohesion’s action for refugees in Europe’ (CARE), which also allows Member States to take funds from the Cohesion Fund to allocate to the reception of refugees.  This is a duty, and there is a particular duty, because you have, Mr Geuking, spoken – rightly so, by the way – on children. There are, among the refugees, hundreds of thousands of children who have lost everything. And there’s a duty now to take care of these children, as it is a duty, by the way, to take care of all children. I fully agree with you. Therefore, in a few days, we will have the national plans on the implementation of the child guarantee and we also have to include in this child guarantee the children of refugees. It is not conceivable that these children have no education, that they will be nowhere, that they will be the lost Ukrainian generation, which is, by the way, the aim of the dictator in Moscow. Therefore, we have a strong responsibility to give them – again, as for all children – the right support, the right education, the right care.  Yes, this war is a challenge for poverty. In the European Union, we still have a high degree of poverty. More than 96 million people are at risk of poverty. We have taken an important commitment by reducing it by at least 15 million, including at least 5 million children, and it cannot be that the war will increase poverty in Europe. This is a challenge. We have to find the right responses, the right resources, the right policies and the right investments in our economies, but also in our social systems.