[Music] Welcome to this new episode of FEPPS Talks. I'm David Rinaldi, director of studies and policies here at FEPPS, the foundation for European Progressive Studies, and I'm very thrilled to welcome here today at FEPPS in our headquarters Agnes Jongerius, member of the European Parliament,
lead member of the S&D group. You have been basically, I would say the leader of the S&D in this legislature on social and economic issues because you have been the coordinator in the committee for the S&D, but also the chair of the Social Europe Network for the party of European of European Socialists. Plus you have been, you know, pushing a lot for the big for the big agenda
of Social Europe. Agnes, it's a pleasure to have you here. Okay, it's nice to be here. Yeah. And the very first question, maybe I would say a general assessment on these legislatures and on the different files that have been pushed forward. You have been at the forefront. We have been able to achieve maybe even more than we had expected at the beginning, at least, you know, from some operator and from myself as well. This is what it is the perception. You have a similar perception of
a rather exceptional legislator when it comes to Social Europe. Yes or no. And in case what brought that about, how do you see, you know, what are the conditions that we had in order to achieve meaningful results? You didn't say in your introduction that I was a trade union leader before coming to the European Parliament. And I must say I came quite often to Brussels to meet in the headquarters of the European Trade Union confederation, but also to take the streets to say to Baroso,
please do something about social politics. And especially important after the banking crisis when the European Commission forced quite a lot of member states to reduce their welfare states, to reduce their minimum wage, to push for austerity and ordinary working people were suffering quite quite a lot. But our protest, our resolutions and our I mean now the ETC didn't make any
lasting impression. And even in the end of his mandate, but also came to one of the meetings of the ETC board and say, yeah, sorry, but you know, as a commission, I'm responsible for three babies, the economics, the social and the environmental. But in the banking crisis, it was clear the economic baby was ill. So I had to concentrate everything on that at the expense of both others. And that was indeed also my impression. So the Baroso years totally lost.
In my opinion, a change of mind came first after the Brexit referendum. Because I think quite a lot of people didn't expect, let's say ordinary working men and women in the UK voting for leave. While on the other hand, it's also clear that for them, when you say, Brussels is only concentrating on the economy and doesn't give a a bit about working people, then people said, why should I care about what Brussels is doing?
And I think after the Brexit referendum, a few people saw that it was time for change. And I think first we have to acknowledge the fact that Junker saw this coming from a country as Luxembourg, where social partners were always involved. But here I also want to pay tribute to Marie-Gioa Huldricas, who crapped the opportunity to push for this little booklet, the European pillar of social rights.
So Brexit referendum, the Goetheberg Summit, where this booklet was being undersigned by Council, Commission and the Parliament, was the start of a change. And in this mandate, we even pushed further. So there was this pillar. Some changes were made, for instance, in the last mandate of Junker, the first, the only mandate of Junker. Like, for instance, to work life balance for young parents and the posting of workers' directives.
But in this mandate, if you look closely at the first speech Ursula van der Leyen made in 2019 for the European Parliament, she promised us decent wages. She promised us to make an end of exploitation of platform workers. She promised us equal pay men and women. So she made quite a long list of commitments and she didn't do this by herself. But this was because
our political family have been pushing for this. And next to the Green Deal, which was also important in this mandate, the package of social commitments were made and were forced upon Ursula van der Leyen in the beginning of the mandate. And then we only need to keep pushing, pushing, pushing to not only have commitments in their first speech, but also make concrete proposals.
And there, I must say, Nicolas Smith as the Commissioner for Social Affairs and our lead candidate now did a great job in pushing these proposals coming from the Commission to the Parliament and Council. This is indeed true because the feeling is that very much about politics is the organization and governance. But in the end, a lot boils down to the people that are there and having Smith that was ready to kick in his work from day one with clear motivation, you from the
side of the Parliament. And at the same time, we had the Portuguese Presidency relaunching on Porto, the Spanish Presidency, now the Belgian Presidency. It's a feeling of having a situation in which we had a kind of a bulldozer with Smith in the Commission. You and other colleagues at the S&D Group extremely, extremely influential plus the support of some of the key precedences that we're also doing the extra mile. So somehow the governance and key people in key places were
very, very relevant. But also, let's say the beginning, where's the European pillar of social rights was also helpful in, because there were a lot of people also in the Commission and in the Parliament who thought, yes, the pre-European project is about earning money and this whole, let's say, trickle down economy thinking. So that's crony internal market and then everyone gets a bigger part of the cake, which is nonsense, of course. But there are indeed,
I encountered colleagues who said, no, no, no, Junkard, that was the social commission. Now we are doing the real stuff again. But having this foundation, having the commitments of Ursula van de Leia and then pushing from different sides from our political family made this a quite
successful mandate. I don't know if it was the same for you if you recognized, since the onset, the relevance of the pillar of social rights and the 20 principles, but as an observator of European affairs, at first I was a little bit skeptical of a document and a declaration without really binding power or an enforcement, so I'm very principal. But then I have realized that actually
it's a huge way and a great way to open up a political agenda. So it's not because the principles have an immediate application, but the ability to place something relevant in the agenda so that legislative actions can follow and you can hammer on social issues even after. So the issue is a little bit now what? We had the action plan and we had the action plan. We had a lot of moments now. Where do you think is the next step taking up? So how can we still maintain
this high attention on the social issues? It's not that the two things are contra-posing, but now there's a lot of attention on competitiveness, industrial policy, the transitions, plural. How we can maintain the fact that the social outcomes of the transition of the transformation remains relevant in the commission itself or in the precedences? It will not be easy, but like you said, indeed the European pillar is now, it's found its way in different policy
areas. So it finds its way in the budgetary guidelines. It's mentioned in the RRF, so the Recovery and Resilience Fund. It's touched upon in the net zero industry act. So you see that the booklet itself is finding his way in the different policy areas, but still for instance this example of the net zero industry act. You see that they make it clear that everyone who wants to profit from the funding from this net zero industry act should take into account
sustainability. And then it says, and it should make a choice between the social pillar, the cyber crime, or projects around payment on time. So let's say it's mentioned, but it's not there yet. And so every now and then when I'm feeling a little bit low, I think okay, we have been able to push
this rock up the mountain, but now perhaps it's just falling back again. But here I think I'm deeply convinced that we, although the political arena will be changed after the elections, it's important that our political family is aligning with the other progressive forces. So with the Greens and with the left group and demanding from the new commission, like the first commitment from the layer made in July 2019, we need to have the same kind of
commitment in 2024. And I think we could work from the seeds we have been planting in this mandate, which for instance, indeed about we made the minimum wage directive. In the minimum wage directive, it says it's very important that more workers are covered by collective bargaining. So I think we should introduce in the public procurement directive a condition that until 80% of the workers are covered by collective bargaining,
no money is floating to this company or that project. So I think we have to be clever in combining all the seeds which are there on the table. So a public procurement, I think that's very important, is something which we can align the progressive forces with. And you can also make to let's say the other parties the simple question, why shouldn't we
put our money where the law is? So I think we have the rhetoric on our side, not only that, I was also I must say quite pleasantly surprised about the report of Enrique Letta, which was presented two months ago, something like that, was quite clear that an internal market can only function if the social fabric is also taken care of. So he is quite clearly promoting and other kinds of economics as Baroso did,
ignoring the two babies because the economy was ill. Here Letta is saying the economy, the internal market cannot flourish if you ignore people and don't take care of their basic rights as in the European of Social Rights. And even Draghi is now pleading for a massive investment also because the trickle down economy doesn't function. If we really want to make the change for a sustainable and social economy, then we have to have big investment also at the European
level. It comes to mind that perhaps we should consider our union not as three babies, but as one single baby, our society that has actually different things that need to be taken care of at the same time, but taking care of one only, it's not going to give a healthy society or a
healthy baby. And I see a little bit the danger of going a little bit too much into the Draghi direction, at least that his report is not public yet, but it's a lot about of course consolidation and making sense of the single market for big companies, getting from 36 companies in the telecom sector to four companies in the telecom sector so that we can have scale and we
can use the investment appropriately. But I'm thinking, okay, what are the implications then that there are in terms of the movement of people, of working conditions, of even territorial and
social cohesion, which are priorities of our union. So the feeling is that we have to go to another stage of internal market probably, but indeed as you are stressing and also is present in LEPTA's report, we have to make sure that the internal market is delivering for everybody, even if for people that are not moving to other places, how to get the internal market for everybody
in a sense. Yeah, and I think in that sense when first let I was talking about you don't only have the right to move is one of the four freedoms and not only a movement of capital goods and services, but also of people. When he first started to talk about you also have the rights to stay. Then I was thinking, okay, what does he mean? But if really this will be a cornerstone
of new economic thinking, then indeed cohesion policies are also part of it. And perhaps also let's say put your investment, not only put your money where the law is, but also put your investment where it's perhaps needed most in order for people to stay. Because I think indeed I will always defend the freedom of workers to move around. Because you cannot say capital goods and services are allowed to move, but people should stay in their place. That's not fair. We know that
Western European companies destroyed quite some employment in Central and East Europe. So there is also this four freedom which we have to defend. But I think we trying to think what would it mean that you should not be forced to stay to earn a decent living is also an interesting challenge. And I think indeed you're right, thinking about all these issues separately will not do the trick. Although of course we know that let's say the big businesses
are lobbying for only the economy. But if we want to have the support of people of Europe for our cooperation and also all the things which are part of that, we should also take care of people. And therefore I'm going back again to this European pillar of social rights. I know you cannot go to the butcher or the bakery and say this is my pillar. Can I have my meat or my bread for free? But it's in a way a
it's a to-do list where we have to work on. And for instance here housing is mentioned in number 19. There are people housing that's not a European competence. But if you see that everywhere in Europe young people have problems in starting their lives because they have insecure labor contracts but also no affordable housing, then we have to work on this and have to see how we can make it work for people. And then you can say yeah see it's part of the European pillar. Please work on that.
So I have this little booklet in my course all of the time. It's useful. It looks a little bible, a little guide, a little guidance. But indeed since the European pillar of social rights was issued, even though it's of course difficult to communicate to people the value of it and what the socialists have done. But if I look at the you mentioned the work-life balance directive, also the other one on predictable working conditions so that people know exactly what
they can find in their contract and we ruled out zero hour contracts for instance. We had the equality strategy, the care strategy, the child guarantee, the skills agenda. Everything is rooted in of course the minimum wage, a minimum and adequate wages. So a big agenda came from Schmitt and Dali and other Shure as well, different things. You mentioned two things, very relevant housing and public procurement. Two things in which you have
jumped. So another moment to dig on this and then I will have other two other two policy areas. But first both maybe on housing and on public procurement. On housing if you have ideas about actually what Europe can do because you mentioned there's not a lot of competencies at the European level even though we had started a little bit through the Green Deal, maybe the renovation
wave. So taking the angle of basically energy efficiency in housing. So if you see it because we notice also with the pandemics that it's a big inequalities in housing, getization, but we have European issues, short-term rentals and marketization of the sector. There's an affecting Europe, all the big cities and all the big all the countries. So what can
literally the union or the parliament or the S&D stand for? And I ask this and then you answer in package also because I really would like to stress the point that you make on public procurement. Because I find it extremely relevant you have been able to push it back in the top of the agenda of the group and therefore of the union. This ability to shape the type of society and employment
we want thanks to the type of contracts that we give. We received several complaints or in conferences that one issue is that people are truly affected by the fact that people keep on dying at the workplace too much too often. And then you go and check and you see that people have crazy contracts or they are subcontracted by the subcontractor or the subcontractor. Can we end these practices with one simple European with one simple European European law that states clearly
minimum standards for public procurement? You want me to start with housing or this? Okay let's do housing first. And when I say housing first that's also the name of the project in ending homelessness in Europe with a target 2030. And there you see let's say target setting. Is this really legislative work? No, but if target setting is leading to exchange of good practices and at the moment there is also the platform Nicolas created for exchange
between the member states how to fight homelessness. Is that working? The legislative proposals around short term rentals are also working but next to that I think yes we could use the money of the Green Deal and let's prioritize it to start with the social housing and make them energy-friendly. But I think in general you could also see that if in the big cities ordinary working men and women cannot live anymore why should you work?
I was two months ago in Dublin where you see there are a lot of let's say high-tech giants in Dublin for tax reasons but to attract people the metas of this world both complete streets to house their experts and now the city has real problems in attracting nurses, police officers, teachers because they cannot afford to live there anymore and then they rather live in another city but there is a relation between the labor market and the access to affordable housing and I think
making an attempt to have a special either via the IEB or otherwise a special fund for building affordable housing I think would be really very very helpful and I'm luckily Nicholas also took this as one of his campaign messages so I think having a deal in the start of the new commission on how to deal with this lack of affordable housing is with him in safe hands. Um... Another way of having more money available for the social processes is indeed using public procurement.
Because there is quite a lot of money floating around in the European Union. And here we are still working with these old rules. Where in the public procurement directive it states that a member state, when transposing this directive to legislation, can take into account social clauses. And there you see what is going to happen. Because if it's can, then there is no obligation. And if there is no obligation, then the choice for just the cheapest bit will be taken.
And there it's clear that the cheapest bits are often at the expense of ordinary working men and women. So I think we need a change of the public procurement directive and have a shell instance of a can. You shall take into account the social clauses and of course also the sustainable clauses. But we should also do this when handing out European money directly. So it's not only for the member states, I think it's also for the European Commission.
And here just at the end of the mandate, we decided in the parliament to make a public procurement alliance. Together with people from the left group, from the Greens and also from the EPP. And of course you can say the EPP will not agree as a whole. But if we can build with this alliance and I think we can also look after the more social inclined people in the liberal groups.
I think we can have a majority to really push for a change in the directive and in the way European money is being handed out. And then we could push even more for the commitments we made in this mandate. I think this sounds great. Sort of a smart and progressive conditionality for public procurement and European funds. In order to make sure that health and safety at the workplace, but also, you know, contracts, quality of contracts is guaranteed.
That would be great. In my mind I'm thinking about sort of triple dividend of EU money. So whenever there is EU financing, you need to have a dividend in investment, but also better working conditions and better environmental conditions. In that sense you see that in some member states our progressive family took the lead in, for instance in Portugal. They do it via tax credits. So if you are working with a collective agreement, you get a bigger tax refund as a company.
So it balances out, but it's also making clear what your priorities are. And I think here I'm very much in favor of social legislation, full stop. But I think if we are able to integrate it in all these areas. Yes, it's a mainstreaming of social in the different aspects. Otherwise you take care of the industry and the social. You have to consider that you have one baby, not different baby. Yes, indeed. But allow exactly because we have one society and not completely different systems.
Two additional policies that I would like to dig into and to get your input because I've seen you very active on this in the last few years of your mandate is the platform directive. There's exactly pushing for if you want rights in this new type of online works.
And the other one is the zero unemployment territories or the local job employment initiative that you have also been pushing for is the role of the public sector to create and activate social economy and job creation quality job creations. So these two angles on the platform directive and employment initiatives. What makes you hopeful? What do you like? What are the problems you see? If it's about platform work. I do remember that I think in the last campaign, so the 2019 campaign.
I was contacted by Uber drivers in Amsterdam and they were like very unhappy about the way where they were treated and they went. They wanted to go on strike and they wanted my advice. So I was in contact with them. They went to the head office of Uber because the European headquarter in Amsterdam because of tax reasons. So they came there and there I noticed at least now I didn't notice but they pointed it out to me that there was a staff toilet.
And they said we are not allowed to use this stuff toilet because Uber considers us not as stuff stuff are the people in accounting and marketing. We are just users of their digital services. So they even went this far as in declining them, denying them the rights to use the bathroom. Which I think is really, okay, it's inhuman.
But here also I can make a reference to the European pillar because it says in number 12, regardless of the type and the duration of the employment relationship, workers and in comparable conditions self employed have the right to adequate social protection.
And that is exactly what these platform workers are lacking because the platform are not only denying them the rights to use the staff bathroom, but also the right to unemployment protection, to pension, even to a minimum wage because they say, we cannot guarantee how much you are being called for and waiting time is your own time. So people are not even getting a guaranteed minimum income.
And here at the Expanel in fighting of a big, big, big lobby of the platforms because they are really filthy rich and powerful. Yes, powerful, big lawyer firms with advisory. I would say well connected with liberal governments. Can we say that? Yeah, it's not for nothing that the name of a mine well Macron is being mentioned in the in the Uber leaks. They are well connected. They are also well connected to my still prime minister Mark Rutte in the Netherlands.
We succeeded in with a call on this succeeded in saying, okay, it's not the case that a worker should go to court themselves, him or herself to claim the basic workers rights. But let's assume that people are just a employee with the basic workers rights, unless the platform can say for this worker or that one, he's an accountant, he's an IT specialist. It's a real self employed person.
So we were able to change in the legislation and the presumption of an employment relationship and shifting the burden from the worker. So now the default is that they are employees. And if the platform wants to say otherwise, they have to come up with serious proof. The serious proof that this is not the case. And yes, this has been a huge fight.
My colleague, Elisabeth, for this fight for our political family, and Nicholas had to fight it first to came up to come up with the proposal because in that state there was already quite a lot of resistance. And yes, in the end, it was indeed Macron still voting against the German government abstaining because the liberals there in that government want to follow the line of Macron.
And they have this agreement that if they don't think alike on European proposals, the government in the council have to abstain. But luckily we were able to get all the others on board. And indeed in the last week, the European Parliament was sitting, we were able to push the yes button for the proposal. I'm very happy with that.
But then still, and that's something Nicholas is also saying, be it for the minimum wage directive, be it for the pay transparency directive, be it for the women on board directive, be it for the platform directive. It's all about transposing and indeed make it a reality for those drivers in Amsterdam. But we made some progress there. That's super. Maybe the other point on the other policy on the zero unemployment that I saw that you were very close to this initiative as well.
How hopeful you are that we can see, we have seen something already now with Schmidt making available several millions for these... 23 millions. Which is serious money. It's indeed something we also were able just to indeed get announced at the end of this Parliament's mandate. And it's something where I worked on together with my colleague, our LaLuke, because she's coming from France and she is quite connected to what in France is called the... Territoire de Roche-Meur de Langdouli.
Absolutely. Thank you. Or something like that. Something like that. And there are 60 of them in France where instead of just pushing unemployed people to the labour market and if you want to be successful, try to do this with the people who are just out of job because they are the most easy to get back to the labour market.
There they had in this system of this territoire, a combination of local stakeholders sitting around the table and starting just to invite people to say, "Come work with us." And instead of pushing people, inviting them and say, "Okay, if you come here, you get a labour contract, you get minimum wage, you get workers' rights, and we're going to look at what are your interests, your skills, and we find something which is needed in the local community and is fitted for you.
I visited a project in one of the Algonquie-Somans of Paris where people were cooking meals because they had done some catering experience and now they are making meals for the local community with food which would otherwise be destroyed because of... let's say near the end date or making... because people like to work with wood, big trunks for greening the streets and making trees in the streets with these big trunks
or assisting elderly in assisting them going to a hospital visit or to the pharmacy or just for the fun of it. So it's a combination of local stakeholders offering people a job and a guarantee that they have their rights and the needs in the local community are being catered for. And it's quite the same which I have seen in my country in the town of Groningen where they did the same.
So the official policy in the Netherlands is people should take the shortest route from social benefits to work and here they say no you get just a place and for instance I met a man who was taking an eye on is there a lot of stuff laying in the pockets and on the streets but he told me in the end my main job is taking care and cuddling the elderly because they are so lonely.
So then Yonak the deputy came with the proposals from the Vologna and he decided to make this an opinion of the Committee of the Region. Aurora LeLuk and I we said okay let's try to get a pilot project funded and instead of a pilot project now we have a complete budget line with 23 million euro available. It's so good to see progressive people working and delivering for employment to end unemployment to activate people and communities.
And making this let's say people centered so not centered around which is the quickest way to get you out of. But what's necessary for you. With the guarantees people also need to make the steps. Not the transfer but the dignity of a job that is valued by your community which makes it also sustainable over time. Allow me maybe a more personal question could be a little bit political but also personal.
You know something about your time because you have been representing in a sense the labor socialist in your country. And the head of delegation of the Dutch in the S&D group you have been representing as you mentioned the trade unions at the European Parliament which is not an easy task and probably very much needed. You have been representing social policies for all Europeans in this period. So I would say three big weights on your shoulder.
What are you most proudly proud about what you know could be of the achievements of the of the of the things done of the role that you that that you have played in this in this legislature and the and the and the previous one something you know a little bit. I would say what make you what make you happy and proud.
Now that we were able to integrate this policy in other fields of policies is of course it's not done by me only but I can claim some ownership of that and I'm proud of that but I think if I'm really have to single out one thing is that indeed in this minimum wage directive. We are not talking about guaranteeing trade union rights and having more people covered by collective bargaining.
And that's the real change in the European policy making because we know the recipe of the toy car was still abandoned collective bargaining people are saying or trade unions that's something of the past. We don't need it anymore like a bit a little bit of the talks of Uber saying everyone wants to be flexible and flexibility and basic rights are something of the 19th century and now people can take care of themselves. With this.
Milestone we put into the legislation, forcing member states to sit together with their social partners.
And we are not there at the 80% and even in the Netherlands we are not there at the 80%. So forcing them to make a plan how to raise the level of people covered by collective bargaining is I think very interesting for now I think it's also important in the whole enlargement of the European Union because I think we should also make it clear to the Dutch who are all now invited to prepare themselves for a European membership they should know this is part and parcel of what we are pushing for.
So this 80% collective bargaining. And therefore enforcing and enabling trade unions at national level to fight their fights. And perhaps I can be of some little use in different member states because now when I'm not standing anymore. I have some free time on my hands. And if I can help in pushing this agenda further. I'm really love to do that. That's great.
Great to hear and I think it would be extremely relevant to still hear from you and guidance and actions on how to expand the voice of trade unions and workers in EU policies because that's very much needed. Maybe my last question because not long ago at FEPPS we published a study with the EPC with social platform, Solidar and Aka Europe on the social pillar and the future of the EU social agenda.
A little bit the study looks at the current implementation of the pillar some of which aspect we have covered. We also try to push on what is the type of social action plan need in the next legislator. So try to bring some ideas on minimum income directive, something on fairness intergenerational fairness for instance.
If you have to, you know, to suggest to the socialists, to the progressives, the democrats on one or two things that we should really focus on achieving in the next legislator. What are the one or two things that you would really like to see next to changing the public procurement directive. I think that would be helpful. I myself am also very much in favor of a minimum income directive.
And I know a lot of people are saying cannot be done. It's in not in line with the treaties, but that they said about minimum wage to. Exactly. But it didn't take smithing to account. So I think here I do hope and this study is helpful for that that people are not giving up with one little pushback because you get a lot of pushback.
I also did in in the past mandate, but I hope everyone will be assured that if you are able to resist this pushback and join the fight because it's also nice that you know, Nicolas is doing it here. I'm doing it in the parliament. If I need someone I can call the Minister of Social Affairs in Portugal or indeed the Belgium two ministers were very active on this field.
So you also have to play the game smartly. But I think public procurement, a minimum income, because we have already in the action plan, the reduction of poverty. And even though the commitment to reduce poverty has been made before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. We only have a few years left to really reach this target and we have to reverse this growing inequality. And I think a focus point with pushing for a directive is also helpful to get the attention where we need to get it.
And that should be in this rich continent. Children should be able to just go to school with a full stomach. Parents should be able to every now and then invite someone over for a play date and not being afraid that people are looking at why I still know heating or no carpet on the floor. It's a debate about also human dignity and fighting for a minimum income directive can be a nice symbol to fight for this dignity for all citizens in Europe.
Indeed. I think a union that prioritizes on dignity and ending poverty should be a union that makes us proud. Thanks a lot Agnes for this inspiring talk that looks at what we have achieved and still put some grains on and initiative on what we have to achieve still. We had Agnes Jongerius with us, head of the Dutch delegation to the S&D and also coordinator in the Ampli Committee. Thanks a lot Agnes.
See you soon for the next episode of FAP Stokes and have a look on the nice material we have on our website on social Europe because this is a fight we all have to carry on. . [MUSIC]