Employment and social policy: Pervenche Berès

Efforts to streamline the EU budget could mean bad news for Europe’s most vulnerable citizens, warns Pervenche Berès

The European Union is going through its most serious crisis since its creation. Behind the sometimes rather technical debates about banking and monetary issues hides a brutal social reality, marked by a surge in unemployment and the social disasters that all too often come with it.

The gravity of a situation like this makes the negotiations around the 2014-2020 financial framework and reforms to the European social fund (ESF) and the European globalisation adjustment fund (EGF), two complementary tools established to promote employment and combat unemployment, all the more critical.

Our goal must be to re-establish the proportion of the EU’s budget dedicated to the ESF, which has continued to fall over the years.

At a time when public money is hard to come by, this target must be upheld by the European parliament in its negotiations. The council will find it difficult to agree to let the EU’s added value thrive.

It is not because states must reduce their sovereign debt that the EU has to do without the resources it needs to act. On the contrary, this is even more important if member states want the Europe 2020 strategy that they have adopted to succeed.

This strategy includes key targets in terms of employment, training and the battle against social exclusion.

In this context, the introduction of a macroeconomic condition for the use of structural funds, and first of all of the ESF, is not acceptable in current circumstances.

Allocating this aid in accordance with the stability pact would convey the desire to inflict a double punishment on states and citizens who are already struggling.

Putting an end to an illness by draining the patient is surely not the right cure. This concern is aggravated by the prospect of seeing the budget for funding the European programme of food aid to the most deprived included in the European ESF.

It also concerns the future of the EGF, whose attempt to move towards a mechanism to support the income of farmers is clear.

Out of the proposed budget of €3bn, up to €2.5bn could be allocated to the sections of European agriculture that have been seriously affected by the free trade agreements between the EU and third party countries.

This form of solidarity involves organising things between the less well-off in society, which is not our idea of the European social model.

The EGF must rather help those laid off from industry by funding measures to help them back to work. This is all the more effective as it leaves plenty of room for social innovation, as seen on the ground by the visit of the delegation from parliament’s employment and social affairs committee to Spain at the beginning of November.

The issues surrounding the structural funds are conclusive, but the nature of the challenges to be faced requires more extensive reflection.

For example, it is time to understand that the question of employment also depends on fiscal issues. In contrast to an ideology that establishes a dogma of free and fair competition, the absence of fiscal harmony within the EU prevents us from winning the fight against employment inequalities.

Last but not least, there will be no progress within the EU without massive investment in education, training and research.

With this in mind, we need to continue on the path set out by article nine of the treaty on the functioning of the EU, which demands that we take into account requirements linked to the promotion of a high level of employment and a high level of education when defining and implementing policies and actions.

Employment must under no circumstances suffer from the incompetence of governments who, terrified by the turmoil in the financial markets, are brandishing austerity plans with disastrous social consequences in front of blind rating agencies.

On the contrary, it is in this period of increasing austerity that social Europe must stand strong. Quite simply, the survival of the European social model is at stake.

Pervenche Berès is chair of parliament's employment and social affairs committee