Annual Convention for inclusive growth 2017
This year, the one-day event focused on the social inclusion of young people and the solutions that exist for them to reach their full potential.
Marianne Thyssen, the Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility opened the Annual Convention focusing mainly on the importance of the forthcoming European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). She stressed three key objectives of the Pillar: Equal opportunities access to labor market, fair working conditions and social protection and inclusion. And adding, that the EC needs to ensure that everyone is protected and have covered and contributes to the social protection. One of the main challenge is to combat the youth poverty, and a complement which is helping to that is the youth guarantee, which has managed to reduce unemployment from a peak of 20% in January 2013 to 17.7% in January this year, according to the EC sources. Another initiative will the “Occupational Placement portal” that it will start to work as from June 2017.
The Maltese Minister of Education, Evarist Bartolo, recalled to the audience the importance of investing in human beings. Likewise, he stressed, the importance of making sure that the economic growth is well accompanied by an inclusive growth and linking to personals and social justice. He suggested to modify the PISA model, as right now, it’s only a competition between countries and those who are doing well on this model don’t have inclusive education systems, in his opinion. During the speech, he referred to the migration crisis stressing that in 2050 the young people in Africa will outnumber the one in Europe.
The first plenary discussion counted with the participation of:
- Martin Berthelsen, from SAND- The Danish national organization for homeless people, who shared his personal testimony;
- MEP Maria Joao Rodrigues called for a Social Right Pillar credible and strong, and including and stronger protection of labor rights and workers’ fundamental rights;
- MEP Eva Maydell, stressed that today to be digital savvy is not enough. “The way out of poverty is not only finding a job but knowing how to constantly acquire new sets of skills”, she added;
- Justin Gest, Assistant Professor (George Manson University), highlighted how we need to be more inclusive on the new multicultural society and recognize the dignity of migrants and their skills, and jobs;
- Carina Autenruber, VP of European Youth Forum, who put on the core of the debate the relevance of young people who must to be included in EU debate in order to reconnect Europe, this is fundamental.
In March 2016, the European Commission launched a broad public consultation on a European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The Commission is expected to present a new communication and recommendation on the European pillar of social rights on 26 April in a package with other proposals for more Social Europe.
The afternoon session was split in between workshops which revolved among inclusion of young people, people with disabilities, or how to combat youth poverty.
- W1 – Opening up quality pathways for young people: the most important is that young people get access to information and opportunities, and to introduce certificate of recognition system when young people participate in conference or working experiences;
- W2 – Investing in children and breaking the cycle of disadvantage: As it is well-known, child poverty today is still a challenge and is needed to collaborate with parents and families in order to overcome it;
- W3 – intergenerational fairness and combating youth poverty: Social policy should be developing at the same speed as the new ways of employment, invest in lifelong learning programmes and non-formal education to include second chance programs available for harder to reach target groups and we need to end age discrimination to access to social protection and to apprenticeships;
- W4 – Addressing social inclusion challenges of young people in urban areas: Local authorities and NGOs do great work with young people, policy makers should listen them. This workshop included a nice remark “Let’s allow young people to dream bigger and we can only allow them to do that if we can be part of it and make the dream possible for them”;
- W5 – Addressing social inclusion challenges of young people with disabilities: Two interesting ideas: the needed to access the information where they could find job opportunities and to establish role models for them, raising awareness of what they are capable.
Last panel discussion wrapped the whole day session by:
- Georg Fischer, from DG Social, who believes that the social protection can be a game changer, which is very related to social pillar right as today the social protection is unbalance in different member states;
- MEP Javi Lopez, who spoke about his own experience as young politician. “We need more social policies and to put in the core of our macro-economic coordination social standards and figures”. And he stressed the relevance of a legal framework between personal and work life, parental leave, equal treatment, social protocol to ensure fundamental rights to take an economic freedom;
- Michele LeVoy, from the Social Platform, asked to end the system of unpaid internships and ensuring the quality of them and the possible access to apprenticeship, as if young people are working under the same conditions their revenues should be the same;
- Liliy Harizanova – social tea house Varna European Youth Capital – BG, explained their own experience in Bulgaria working with local economy, and government in order to combat exclusion and giving a second chance to that youngest that they are lost.
Concluding remarks were given by The EC Vice-President, Mr Dombrovskis, in charge of the Euro and Social Dialogue. He focused his speech more about growth than about inclusion but we he still remarked the work of the New Skills Agenda in rethinking education and the way we work, and supporting lifelong learning programmes as a key action. The EC will present the reflection paper on social dimension of Europe following up the white paper presented last month, the scope is to present approach the social issues in the sense of societal.
pictures @ DG Employment