Last Thursday the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection discussed the service initiative “A service economy that works for Europeans”, presented by the European Commission on 10.01.2017 with the EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Elżbieta Bieńkowska.

 

It is a fixed date in the calendar of many in Brussels: the New Year’s Reception hosted by AK EUROPA, the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour and the ÖGB Europabüro, the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions. Thus, the rooms were well filled by attending guests.

This week, AK EUROPA, the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour together with the Brussels Office of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions ÖGB, the Chamber of Labour Saarland, the Chambre des Salariés Luxembourg and IG Metall hosted a high calibre panel discussion on the subject of austerity policy.

 

At the close of the public consultation on the “European Pillar of Social Rights” (EPSR), the European Commission hosted a large-scale conference. It was the aim of the conference to gather all relevant stakeholders to assess progress and to define the future orientation of the EPSR.

 

Since in September 2015, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, within the scope of his speech on the “State of the Union”, announced the development of a European Pillar of Social Rights, it has not only been the European Commission working on filling this announcement with contents. The European Parliament too has now voted on a corresponding report.

 

According to a study of the World Economic Forum and another by the charitable organisation Oxfam, inequality is not only steadily on the rise but also increasingly becoming a problem for the global economy. The discussion on wealth distribution has, therefore, finally reached the economic mainstream.

And yet it moves: economic policy at last recognises inequality as an important issue; for example at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week.

In April 2016, the European Commission launched a public consultation on a European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) and presented a first preliminary outline. In the following, the BAK’s key positions on the initiative are set out below.