[ Music ] >> Hello, this is Feb Stolz, the podcast series of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. My name is Lance Lohander, and I'm the Secretary General of Febz, and I'm the host today. I have the great pleasure to welcome in our headquarters in Brussels Anne Fanlanker, who is a president of Solidar, and I will ask you to introduce Solidar briefly, because it's a very important umbrella organization of social NGOs.
But I should also tell you about Anne, that she is a coordinator on behalf of Belgium for a European Social Policy Analysis Network, which is called ESPAN, which also contributes to the work of the European Commission on the Assessment of Social Policies and Social Trends in Society. And very importantly, Anne was a member of the European Parliament between 1994 and 2009.
And there were two committees in which she particularly worked, which was the Employment and the Social Affairs on the one hand, and Women's Rights and Gender Equality on the other hand. And obviously, this is a great experience in European politics and focusing on social policy, which spans several decades.
And that's why at this moment, when a European Commission is entering, and a lot of people are really concerned about the policy agenda and how it would develop in the next five years, we should ask Anne's opinion from the perspective of the civil society, which is amalgamated in Solidar.
Can you tell us first of all about Solidar and what is the view of the members of Solidar on this current phase when we are probably closing a very productive cycle of EU social policy and look ahead to what exactly? >> Yes, sure. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
First of all, Solidar is an umbrella organization, a European progressive organization that is networking amongst around 50 organizations, Europe-wide, on particular issues that are related to social policy and migration on one side, development, cooperation, and education, and recently, because of the recent developments, we are also working very much on just transition, which is cross-cutting issue amongst these three pillars.
We are trying to do advocacy with European institutions, but also trying to mobilize our national members and make them more aware and more involved in European politics because European politics at the end are having their effects at national level and on people's lives, and that is exactly what we are trying to achieve with Solidar. >> So then the question is how do you see this turning point? When seemingly there should be a continuity between from the lion one and from the lion two.
>> Yeah. >> But the load has changed, especially from the perspective of social policy. What is your view on this? >> Yes, unfortunately, the war, the aggressive war from Russia against Ukraine and the energy crisis and all this stuff came to interfere within the golden age of social policy, which were the last 10 years, if I may say so.
And what we see from now, the least that you can say, is that social rights and social justice is not at the heart of the Vonderlion II European Commission. It's all about competitiveness, industrial policy, growth, because Europe wants to be independent of the rest of the world as much as possible, and then for the rest of the world, it's all about the security. And I should not say that social policy is not there.
If you look at the policy guidelines, there are some hope-giving signs, like for example, she promised to come up with a European anti-poverty strategy, something that civil society organizations have been asking for for years. She promised, but she had to promise because of the summit of La Hulpe under Belgium presidency, made her promise that she would come up with a second action plan to implement the European pillar of social rights, which is good.
And there is also the fact that we now, for the first time ever, have a commissioner who is responsible for housing. Now everybody knows that housing is a big, big problem in Europe. So that's good. Moreover, we are very, very happy that most of these portfolios belong to social democrats. If you just take the social affairs portfolio, we look at Roxana Minzatu. We have Teresa Rodriguez for Just Transition. And we have Don Jorgensen for Housing.
Now we were shocked when we first looked at the title for Roxana Minzatu because in her title there was Jobs, Skills and Preparedness. We were asking ourselves preparedness for what? And at least you should mention at least the role of social policy, social protection in the title of a commissioner. Apparently after the hearings, Wunderlayen understood that there was something missing and fortunately social rights were added. Now to look at her portfolio, it's all quite well.
The only big hopes that we have also in Solidar that this might feed in also in the very hard portfolios that are not on the socialist side, the economic and monetary field which is sometimes quite detached from the social field. And we fear very much that they will keep some of those people enclosed in silos. And we don't like social policy as a silo.
We are convinced that Solidar, that social policy should be cross cutting and very much influencing also economic and monetary policy. So mixed feelings, there are some hopes and opportunities but there are also some threats and we will have to fight very hard to keep social rights on top of the agenda. >> Indeed. You mentioned the European pillar of social rights in the context of this so-called golden age.
And indeed it was a very important initiative at the time of the Yunker Commission. And since it was adopted in an informal setting in Gothenburg, a lot of subsequent policies and legislative actions have been explained by the inspiration of the pillar of the social rights. Do you think it still has this potential, this capacity to inspire and guide future policy initiatives?
>> Yes, even if it's not a binding convention and it should be followed up by concrete actions, legislative and soft law like in recommendations and stuff like that. But the pressure is on. And I must say, well, we were a bit disappointed that it was not binding this European pillar.
But since all the institutions have committed to implement it and to live like it, to live for it, then, well, we were quite -- we ensured that after the Porto Action Plan, now followed La Hulpe with a recommitment to the European pillar of social rights. And the livery is already there. And we have now a European directive. Nobody would have hoped that it ever would come through a European directive on minimum wages.
Where the treaty says that Europe should not be competent for wages. Don't tell them. Which means, no, this is really a hopeful sign. That means if the political will is there, everything can be done. Everything can be an issue of competence of the European Union. And there's also the recommendation -- well, a recommendation on minimum income, which is a bit soft and the governance is not strong enough. But if we keep on pushing on that, on the commitments, that will be something.
Very important is also was a bit before the pillar already, a recommendation that every worker, whether he is a non-standard worker, a platform worker, an independent, a part-time worker, a temporary worker, should be protected by social protection systems. That is very important. Because this is expanding the whole scope of social welfare states to allow people not to live in poverty. Even if you don't have a regular job as an employee with a full-time contract for indefinite times.
That is very important. And so bit by bit, the Commission has been building on this European pillar. And what I see, the Commission always calls it a compass. A compass for social policy. Two things. I think this compass will establish minimum standards across Europe where every country has to live upon. That is very important because this is avoiding social dumping. It's something that was not possible in the years before.
Because nobody thought of this that we needed like a minimum standards, the ILO, basic social rights standards translated into European policy. But this is very, very, very important. The second thing that is important, that there is a growing commitment to not just leave the European pillar of social rights to be a pillar, but also influence the economic semester, European semester. Which is very important. We used to have this excessive deficit rules in the European semester.
We hoped to be able to develop a social deficit system. But it's called a social convergence. That's the same. It's the same. But this means that there will be a stronger push within the European semester process on deficiencies in countries in social affairs. And that is really important. That is why I really see that the European pillar for social rights will become and will remain a compass and a really, well, will give direction to other social policies that are important.
The Portal Social Summit, which you also mentioned, took place in 2021. At the time of the Corona period. And indeed, they adopted a long list of actions. But they also adopted a set of targets, numerical targets, which should be reached by 2030. And this set of targets might be one of the tools which you mentioned that needs to be used at the European level in order to put pressure or provide guidance to the member states. And one of these targets is about poverty reduction.
And I think many of us were a little bit surprised that there's a return to targets. I personally believe it's a good idea. But then it needs to transcend the policy cycles. So there needs to be not only a new commitment to the targets of Portal, but also some kind of concrete action, which sometimes they hint at. What do you think can be and needs to be done in order to give credibility to these targets?
I think we need stronger tools than at the time of the Europe 2020 strategy because we already had some targets on poverty and on social policy, but it didn't work. Well, OK, that was at the time when the crisis interfered and it was not easy to improve social policies at that time. The mindset was not completely correct neither. But now in order to achieve this reduction of 15 million people living in poverty, at least with at least five million children, we will need strong tools.
Now, I already mentioned the anti-poverty strategy that is going to be brought on the table. We will have to ensure that it's more than about words because you can make anti-poverty strategies with lots of declarations but without concrete tools. But still, I already mentioned some. We already have some instruments to make this happen, like the adequate minimum income directive, the adequate minimum income recommendation, the recommendation on access to social protection for all.
We have the recommendation on the European child guarantee to fight against child poverty. These are all building blocks that can help achieve the general target of reduction of 15 million poor and five million children in poverty. So I think we will have to add more on this. Like decent jobs and job quality might be a very important one.
Access to all kinds of essential services is very interesting and also education may form a significant part of this anti-poverty strategy at the European level. I think it's interesting that some of these very important initiatives, which indeed went beyond the expectations occasionally, were born at the time of the corona crisis, which covered about two years in Europe, and probably generated a strong sense of solidarity within countries, but also at the European level.
And that's probably why much of this action was indeed possible. And since the corona crisis is over, what we have seen is the return to fiscal rules and some of the conventional ways to manage the European economy. And I wonder what is your take on this? In other words, how to reconcile the social policy objectives with the structure of the economic governance which we have in the EU?
Yeah, it's true that it was a big disappointment also in Solidar when we saw that the economic governance structure was going to be well, very much about the same, although I must admit that the flexibility that was introduced is interesting.
I think the fact that countries can choose their timing for bringing their budgets in order is good, but we would have expected that there would have been a golden rule on accepting, well, on making an exception for social investments when you calculate the budget deficits and the depths. That didn't happen.
But anyway, since there is some flexibility, we are hopeful that some of the countries, at least the countries who are not highly indebted, because that will not be the case for Belgium, we will not have the chance to make big social investments, but some of them who have, well, reasonable budgets and reasonable debt levels will be able to to invest and there is a certain insight that is a bit different from previously that keeping
keeping the focus on investments is important. It's not just about austerity and austerity only because that almost killed Europe. It killed the whole dynamics of the European Union and it took them so long in the Commission and in the Council to understand that well the fact that they were acting so fearful against the Portuguese and the Greek and all those people who were
suffering in the crisis turned the back way in Europe. It was not a good way to get out. The good way was to invest and have safe budgets of course but have it in a way that you keep on investing. So I have some hope that with the new structure, the new governance, the fact that for example the Belgians for the first time have gathered the Jumbo Council with the finance ministers together with the social affairs and employment ministers who agreed that social
investments was key for the future of Europe. That's very important. That created also a working group to figure out what social investments mean and what they bring to the economy. That's the right way to see it. We should not just think of social investments as costs. It's also a very big opportunity in terms of economic development. That gives me hope so if we can keep that peace, that we can keep that pace, we can keep that route. I think the new governance structure may be somewhat
different from the old one. That will depend a lot on the way it is implemented. What role do you think in the structure of the European semester? Because that also has been undiscruted including a lot of academic studies. Some colleagues investigated the social components in the European semester to a very extent it is 30%, 40% and what is the significance of all this? Is there a potential here or we would need to look at the social policy in separation from the economic governance?
No, as I already said, I don't believe in silos. I don't believe in pillars. If you keep social policy separated from the heart of Europe, which is still economic and monetary policy with the strongest tools and the strongest instruments, you're going to fail. But I must say that I see some evolution because it made us furious in the European Parliament when we saw that social policy was only addressed as a cost and if they spoke about sustainable pensions, the sustainability
was not meant to be for pensioners but it was meant to be for budgets. Sustainable pensions meant that countries should be pushed to cut in the pensions or to save in health care to keep
their budgets in balance. That has somewhat evolved in the recent period and you see more and more indications that the Commission also uses some, well, bad signs, flashlights as they call it, for countries who are performing badly on certain social issues like poverty or like access to health care and give them country-specific recommendations more on that side and not just
on their healthy budgets. So that's good. So this at least is something we should push for, although even if the instruments were put in place specifically also and I should pay gratitude to the Belgian presidency here who has always have been very much motivated to push for social Europe a bit more. You see when you see the spring package from the Commission, it's still very, well, you have to look with a loop to really see the reinforced social orientation.
So I think civil society organizations may have to mobilize a lot more and push more for more social accents in the European semester than there is now. But for example on pensions which you mentioned, what would be preferable from your point of view to ask the EU and the Commission to stress better the adequacy of the pension or to disengage completely from the pension debate and leave the discussions and the solutions to the member states and the social partners in
the member states? No, I would prefer your first solution and that is exactly what they're doing with the network I'm working in as coordinator for Belgium. We all every two years produce pension adequacy reports. Well, that feed in the official documents, the official reports that the Commission itself produces. But the input from the national data and the national evolutions is very much based on our work. And you see an interesting shift on formulating adequacy criteria
for pensioners and not just adequacy for budgets. I think it's a good move because, well, it's maybe a bit authoritarian from Europe, but I like to see some authoritarianism also at the social side and not just at the budgetary austerity programs. So I think it's good. It started with the open method of coordination, but the open method of coordination as you may be aware was very soft. There was not so much guidance by the Commission to push member states in a good
direction. So I'm happy that they are now fully involved in these pension adequacy assessments. And I think that's a good thing. Let me go back further in time because indeed the open method of coordination goes back to the times of the Lisbon strategy. But even before the Lisbon strategy, when you were a member of the European Parliament, you saw how all this started with the creation of the single market on the one hand and Jacques de Lors also ensuring that there is
a social dimension. You actually entered the European Parliament when Jacques de Lors was still the president of the European Commission. What do you think should be kind of remembered from this original approach, which a lot of people really cherish as the great time when everything was supposedly working very well? Well, what we cherished was especially that Jacques de Lors was not only the architect of the internal market, but he was also
a big source of enthusiasm and hope for people. He was the one who stood in person for an ever closer union. Now, I don't know, if you look at Europe nowadays that you can speak about an ever closer union. There is a big tendency to withdraw competencies from the European platform to go back to national competencies. You see that in migration, but you also see
that in other areas. So that was the big nice thing. The law was such a visionary person who always combined his speeches about internal market with solidarity and social justice and social justice and solidarity at European level. At Jacques de Lors time translated into European investments and European Cohesion funds and social funds to support member states efforts to safeguard their social welfare states. Jacques de Lors very much believed in what Frank van den Brueger would now call a
European Union of welfare states and not a European welfare state. He was very much attached to the subsidiarity argument and moreover, well, some of the member states stopped him from investing too much in European action at a purely social field. But he hoped by mentioning always the fact that we should create not just an internal market but also increase and improve solidarity. He always used to say people don't fall in love with an internal market and I liked
this statement very much. And this was really a belief that carried Europe forward and I think we lost it afterwards because afterwards Jacques de Lors himself during interviews told us that, well, he felt that Europe was becoming too much a free market and not a social market economy and he regretted very much that it could turn that way. So that is also maybe to come back to
one of the first comments I made. That is why I think it is important that we now are investing in this European pillar of social rights to be a cross-cutting compass for social rights within
the economic and the internal market and the European semester system. I think a lot of people know about the law that for him the starting point even before you know single European Act and everything was Val duchess and there is a kind of mythology of Val duchess bringing together the employers and employees and kind of secret negotiations and then paving the way to a more institutionalized form of the social dialogue in the European and his intervention in the British
debate at the trade union congress was also very important but I think this is a critical element from an NGO point of view because very often we say okay on the one hand social partners need to be involved but on the other hand civil society. Why do you think we should never forget about also adding civil society in addition to social partners? Oh I think because it's obvious that civil society represents other interests and other people that not specifically social partners are
dealing with. I'm also the president of an umbrella organization that is called the Descendant Goals well don't mind about the title and what is interesting about this forum is that we gather not just anti-poverty organizations or social affairs organizations social organizations like disability people organizations who stand up for people with disabilities but we join them together with representatives of the trade unions and of the mutual companies who are taking care of the
healthcare system and why is this important because this is a merger of institutionalized social partnership that has an official role in policy making and the non-institutionalized smaller ones but we managed to influence greatly the policy choices of the trade unions who previously were not so much involved with poverty for example they were dealing with poverty to the extent that their own members were were hit by poverty so in work poverty was on their plate but unemployed
people long-term unemployed people were far from their interests so I think it's important that civil society organizations can bring in this this this kind of attention and the most vulnerable people who are difficult to bring back to the labor market if you don't do specific things with the labor market and not just with these people it's not just by bringing in activation policies that you will solve the problems it's also by adapting your economic system and your labor market system
so that is why I think civil society organizations play a very important role and we with Solidar were already arguing we should have a civil society platform of negotiations I know I realized that it's very difficult because it's more easy to identify representative organizations of workers than you can identify representative organizations of civil society since we are so many but at least we also already understood that it is important to
form networks ourselves like with the social platform for example and to have regular not just discussions with the European Commission but also an assigned role in trying to design and develop social systems that they that they are also fit for the people we stand for and could you name a couple of concrete actions which social policies stakeholders NGOs which go beyond the workplace would like to see in the next period to be put forward and implemented
by the European Union what would be your top list yeah let me just say that we are very proud that according to us that we would never have had a recommendation on minimum income without the action of social of civil society so that is very very important we were pushing for the anti-poverty strategy and we are very much working on to give it a real content to be a real instrument to fight people to fight the poverty of people I think this is one of the main priorities and then
if you if you look at civil society they're very much involved now in pushing the right agenda for affordable housing because this is one of the big crisis factors in Europe you cannot just solve poverty in the European Union by tackling by upgrading the income component of people by giving them an adequate income whilst at the same time their expenses and the costs of living are so increasing that you can you can keep on increasing the incomes when also the rents is
going up you will not solve a problem so adequate housing is is so important for people and then well I think civil society organizations as believe in the pillar is so big that they also push for more equality initiatives for people with disability but also for for for women for ethnic minorities to have a more solidarity approach towards migrants and refugees which is far from from the attention nowadays that we are just pushing them away whereas everybody sees that our
economies need migrants but we're not tackling this this issue in the right way so there's a lot of expectations within civil society and we hope to be a partner of the European Commission and at least of the commissioner who is responsible for social rights the one for justice transition
and the one for adequate housing in the years to come. Well thank you so much for giving this short list but apparently the short list is also a long list because there is so much to do so anti poverty strategy question of housing non-discrimination and and and and everything that follows let's monitor this together and I think in the coming period there will be opportunities to discuss it further because indeed the proof of the pudding also for the European Commission
is in the eating and beyond the rhetoric indeed what we are waiting for is the concrete actions. Okay thank you. Thank you Anne for coming and thanks for all the insight which you shared with us today.