European Social Policy Instruments in the Alliance

against Poverty

European seminar Organised by the ACW/MOC

“Alliances to Fight Poverty” Committee of the Regions

Brussels, 16 - 17 September 2010

Bart VanherckeEuropean Social Observatory (OSE)

Outline of the talk

1. Open Coordination : what is that? in a nutshell

2. Open Coordination: does it deliver? does it matter in an Alliance against poverty?

3. What is there to do? link with debate about ‘Europe 2020’

Preamble: OMC and ‘Social Europe’

OMC is the “newcomer” among EU social policy instruments such as:

Legislation (eg non-discrimination)

European social dialogue (eg parental leave)

European funding (ESF)

1. Open Coordination: what is that?

Defining the elephant (hold on)

Technically speaking OMC IS…

“A cyclical process where mutually agreed objectives (priorities) are defined, after which peer review (discussion among equals) takes

place on the basis of National Action Plans (reports).

Soft « Recommendations » (Commission/Council) and

comparable and commonly agreed indicators (and targets) enable to

assess progress towards the Common Objectives”

Let’s look at this elephant from a certain distance …

OMC: process cycleLaunching

Common Objectives

Joint Report NSRPeer Review

Indicators Targets

Supported by PROGRESS

In essenceCyclical process of reporting and evaluation of policies,

which should facilitate “policy learning” between MS

(“apprentissage”)

Mostly on issues for which EU has no ‘real’ competencies

(subsidiarity)

« The » OMC does not exist

MS let “1000 flowers bloom”Inflation of OMC’s since 2000

– Organ transplantation, influenza, immigration, smoking, EU development policy, disability policy, Latin America (!)

– VERY different “tools” in the OMC boxes• Arguably different ‘effects’/’usage’ as a

consequence

But

Why should Civil Society care about such

‘soft EU governance ’?

Because – at least to some extent – OMC is « delivering the

goods »

2. Why EU cooperation on poverty matters for civil

society?- Cooperation within context of OMC

brings about substantive policy changes- “Child poverty”: new concept in Social

Inclusion policies of many Member States: straight from OMC cognitive shift

- Remarkable: longstanding resistance against this issue (failed to halt the issue!)

– Strong EU pressure (‘hard governance of soft law’, Greer and Vanhercke, 2010)

Why EU cooperation on poverty matters for Civil

Society (II)- EU cooperation within the context of

the OMC brings about procedural changes, including vertical cooperation- Exchange of information between regions

(across language borders): discovering each other's policies (‘national OMC’)

- Sub-national OMCs (Gender Equality: Flanders; Italian regions); Local OMCs (e.g.. city of Leuven)

Why EU cooperation on poverty matters for Civil

Society (III)• Strengthening and even boosting statistical

capacity• Belgium: ‘desert’ for social indicators,

contested statistics and even trends

• OMC initiated adoption of ‘targets’ in SI policies- NSR national targets for regional competencies

(education, housing etc.)

Why EU cooperation on poverty matters for Civil Society (IV)

• Institutionalisation of NGO involvement in Social Inclusion policies

• Belgium from teacher to ‘pupil’: participation model (‘people experiencing poverty’) looked especially well on paper, less so in practice

• From “Window dressing” to adaptational pressure

Why EU cooperation on poverty matters for Civil

Society (IV)

• Example where “uploading” of national priorities (to EU) bounces back to domestic policy setting (boomerang effect)– OMC works like a “pendulum”

(EU-MS) – Reciprocal influence, not one-

way impact!

3. What is there to do?

Debate about the place of the OMC in

« Europe 2020 »

(4 points)

1. We have achieved a lot… but we could loose it all

Europe 2020:- poverty targets (achievement)- new ‘Guideline 10’ (Integrated

Guidelines) - new Horizontal Social Clause

(Lisbon Treaty), possibilities still to be explored

Achievements could prove to be appearances

- Social Protection Commitee:- far from sure whether some of the

basic tools of the OMC (National Strategic Reports, Joint Reports etc.) will be part of future architecture

- who will be monitoring the headline target (EMCO/ECOFIN)?

- who will coordinate national reporting (finance/prime minister?)

- temporal cycle is uncertain

Achievements could prove to be appearances (II)

• It gets worse: unclear at this stage whether the ‘Social OMC’ will continue to exist as a separate process at all.

• We may end up with the ‘head’ of the process (a new Platform on Poverty), but without the body (the OMC)

• So let’s ‘beware what we whish for’

2. The ‘building blocks’ of a strengthened Social OMC

should be spelled out, without delay

• We need to fight for a ‘broad’ Social OMC

– not exclusively geared at poverty and social exclusion

• SPC and Social Affairs ministers should be ‘in charge’

– safeguard a political space in which they can have their say on any European initiative/development with potential social consequences

2. The ‘building blocks’ of a strengthened Social OMC should be spelled out, without delay (II)• This includes a variety of topics

– pensions (ECOFIN-IMF)– healthcare and long-term care (IM)– services on general interest– education– climate change – and sometimes even agriculture

• On these issues, the SPC should be able to develop “Social Impact Assessment (Lisbon)

3. The Platform Against Poverty, Europe’s new

“best kept secret”, must be revealed

• “Euopean Poverty Platform” • This Flagship remains an

unidentified object:– how does it relate to OMC? – division of labour?

3. The Platform Against Povery, Europe’s new “best

kept secret”, must be revealed

• Both stakeholders (EAPN, social partners, Feantsa, Social Platform etc) and academics provided sufficient input

• Now the European Commission (internally divided?) needs to piece this complicated puzzle, together with the Belgian Presidency

4. We should strengthen the OMC

- By increasing its openness and participation

- Still too much a ‘closed shop’

We should strengthen the OMC (II)

- By making learning more ‘thematic’

- Demand driven- Learn from ‘champions’ and ‘losers’

We should strengthen the OMC (III)

- By reinforcing the set of indicators

- Underpinning the common objectives with indicators that measure the social adequacy of a variety of benefits

- pensions, unemployment, invalidity etc.

- Participatory governance indicators (including at the regional and local level

- would greatly improve the monitoring and assessment of national practices (e.g. involvement of civil society) in this regard.

We should strengthen the OMC (IV)

- By linking it to other EU policy instruments (funding, legislation)

- Making EU Structural Funding (esp. ESF) conditional to achieving the objectives of the Social OMC

- “Put your money where your mouth is”.

- Financial Perspectives 2013-2010 - But… this will not be enough to face

the “series of interlocking crisis”Europe is faced with

5. Towards ‘Hard soft law’?

- Member States may – contradictory as it may seem - have to give up some of their national prerogatives if they want their social systems to be able to deal with the challenges ahead.

- introducing stronger country-specific Recommendations

- binding regulatory standards

- Pathway to that will be long and uncertain.

Way forward for Social Europe:

Using the full range of instruments, and linking

them to each other (law, social dialogue, ESF and

OMC)

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