Luca Visentini speech to Informal EPSCO, Ljubljana, 8 July 2021

Luca Visentini

Minister, Vice President, Commissioner, Ministers, colleagues of social partners and social platform,

Managing the COVID Emergency was essential to protect jobs and businesses and make our labor market resilient.

Now that we are getting out of the pandemic, we need to bridge the gap before recovery starts, in order to avoid an explosion of unemployment.

Emergency measures to protect jobs, wages and working conditions, and to strengthen social protection systems must be continued for all the time necessary.

Additionally, their coverage has to be extended to cover all categories of workers, including self employed and non standard workers.

Return to work must be monitored, to avoid escalation of accidents at work and deterioration of working conditions.

We need now to design a recovery that is sustainable, inclusive and fair, instead of a jobless recovery which has increased inequalities in the past.

We cannot come back to austerity and business as usual, we need to avoid the mistakes of the past.

We need to build a new economic paradigm, focused on people’s well-being and going beyond GDP as an insufficient indicator.

We have to start already now a radical reform of the fiscal rules and the semester process, to make sure that a social governance is fully integrated in the economic governance.

Labour ministers must play a central role in building inclusive and socially fair national recovery plans, which must respect the principles European Pillar of Social Rights, achieve the targets set in its Action Plan for implementation, respect the Social Scoreboard and ensure full involvement of social partners.

A sustainable recovery must be based on just transition, making sure that no one is left behind.

Skills are essential in managing climate and digital transition but alone are not enough.

We need to avoid to create other economic and social deserts in Europe.

We need to make sure that investment generates quality jobs in the Regione’s where they are going to be disrupted, and that communities, local authorities and social partners are involved in just transition through social dialogue and social protection systems efficiently accompany such processes.

Last but not least, we need to make sure that employment and social dimension is at the core of recovery.

We have to measures the impact of investment in terms of quality jobs creation, reinforce social protection systems and avoid austerity driven structural reforms, boost wage and social upward convergence.

In this sense we ask all ministers to support the recently launched EU legislative initiatives on Fair Minimum Wages, Gender Pay Transparency and Platform Work.

The role of EPSCO ministers in promoting sustainable recovery and resilient and inclusive labour markets is essential.

We ask you to be vocal with finance and economy ministers to make sure that austerity and business and usual don’t come back.

We ask you to ensure that the social dimension is key in all national recovery plans.

And we ask to fully involve social partners through social dialogue.

This is not happening in many countries and we ask you to remedy this.

We appreciate your good words about involvement of social partners, but this is high time to turn nice words into reality.

Thank you very much for your attention.

 

08.07.2021
Discours
Now that we are getting out of the pandemic, we need to bridge the gap before recovery starts, to avoid an explosion of unemployment.

We need now to design a recovery that is sustainable, inclusive and fair, instead of a jobless recovery which has increased inequalities in the past.