Social and Sustainable Macroeconomic Policies

Promote Macroeconomic policies that support social, equality and environmental goals

• Implement an ex-ante social/equality/environmental impact assessment and
• A comprehensive strategy that ensures that economic objectives deliver on social, equality and environmental targets.

Invest in inclusive and sustainable growth

• Invest in affordable housing, energy-saving priorities and social/health infrastructure to ensure positive results on multiple Europe 2020 goals: creating new jobs, investing in people, preventing poverty and tackling climate change.

Promote inclusive and sustainable tax

• Ensure tax policy contributes to long-term social and environmental objectives.
• Embed ex-ante impact assessments to guard against unfair distribution, promoting a tax justice model.

Fighting poverty and social inclusion

Increase the ambition of targets and a strategic approach

• MS should set ambitious national targets, draw on all 3 indicators, broken down by key factors (gender/age, ethnicity)
• Each MS should develop a comprehensive diagnosis of causes/trends as basis for integrated antipoverty strategy
• Develop sub-targets and thematic strategies for key priorities/groups: tackling homelessness, investing in children, Roma inclusion and across themes.

Ensure affordable access to quality services – particularly Housing, addressing homelessness, health and long-term care.

• Require measures to increase affordable access to housing: social housing, rent-regulation, tax reform, as well as diversification and re-balancing of housing tenures.
• Increase investment in affordable quality health and long-term care, as well as ensuring equal access including promoting action to counter discrimination eg Roma/undocumented migrants

Strengthen social investment and universal social protection systems

• Give priority to investment in integrated social protection across the life cycle, guaranteeing adequate minimum income, unemployment benefits and pensions with EU-wide benchmarks.
• Ensure proposals to reduce social security contributions must not negative impact on sustainable financing of SP

Investing in children and youth, combined with integrated strategies for all, at-risk groups.

• Encourage implementation of integrated strategies to invest in children (and their families), in line with the Commission’s Recommendation.
• Implement the Youth Guarantee through quality integrated programmes and promote Youth Inclusion, beyond employment
• Ensure that an integrated approach to social inclusion and poverty reduction across the life-cycle is promoted for all key target groups.

Quality Employment

Create sustainable, quality employment across the life cycle.

• Invest in quality green and social jobs
• Concrete measures to reduce in-work poverty and gender pay gap: increasing minimum wages, supporting living wages and work-life balance, defending employment protection and social rights.

Personalized, integrated Active Inclusion not Activation alone

• Explicit promotion of integrated Active Inclusion (income support, inclusive labour market and access to quality services), based on personalized integrated support.
• Access to affordable childcare/ECEC to support women into work.
• Support to active ageing to enable older people to move/stay in jobs with age-friendly LM.

Promoting Inclusive Education

Support Comprehensive Education + LLL

• Universal access to quality, comprehensive education and measures to tackle segregation to key groups.
• Develop lifelong learning and support , on-the job training and lifecycle management for older people.

Social Investment in early childhood/and ESL

• Invest in quality ECEC with quality assurance standards
• Promote an integrated approach to ESL: prevention, intervention and compensation measures and individualized alternative ‘2nd chance’ partnerships.

Vocational Training responding to the labour market and individual needs.

• Better match VET to respond to labour market needs, adapted to individual needs/skills
• Ensure that broader educational values are enhanced beyond labour market needs.

Promoting Gender/Equality

• Reduce the gender pay gap, with a national strategy to eliminate wage discrimination and gender segregation in education and work.
• Close the gender pension’s gap, promoting work-life balance, shared parenting, reforms of social security/tax systems to promote individual rights
• Ensure a compensation mechanisms in pension schemes for time spent caring for children/dependents
• Specific Measures to counter multiple discrimination against Migrant Women – reinforcing employment and social protection rights/independent status.

Investing in resource efficiency and tackling climate change

• Reduce tax exemptions and environmentally harmful subsidies on fossil fuels, differentiating car tax according to energy/efficiency
• Invest in decentralised energy production, renewable fuels and increased energy efficiency
• Ensure climate change objectives have clear guiding principles, measure targets/indicators, timelines and monitoring mechanisms.
• Carry out ex-ante social/gender impact assessment to ensure burden does not fall on the poor, excluded and women.

Click here to open the Semester Alliance key messages on Country-Specific Recommendations as a pdf.