European Pillar of Social Rights - Overview
Introduction

A compass for social progress
Delivering on a more social and fair Europe is a key priority for the European Commission. The European Pillar of Social Rights has been put forward to serve as a compass for a process leading to renewed socio-economic convergence.
The outline of the European Pillar of Social Rights is divided into three main dimensions in the field of employment and social policies. Each of these headings contains a number of policy domains, to which different principles are attached.
- Equal opportunities and access to the labour market
This includes skills development, life-long learning and active support for employment. All these elements are all indispensable to increase employment opportunities, facilitate transitions between different employment statuses and improve the employability of individuals.
- Dynamic labour markets and fair working conditions
These are needed to establish an adequate and reliable balance of rights and obligations between workers and employers. They make sure that there is evenness between flexibility and security to facilitate job creation, job take-up and the adaptability of firms, and promoting social dialogue.
- Public support / Social protection and inclusion
This includes access to health, social protection benefits and high quality services, including childcare, healthcare and long-term care, which are essential to ensure a dignified living and protection against life's risks. This enables citizens to participate fully in employment and, more generally, in society.
Monitored by a social scoreboard
The Pillar is supported by a scoreboard of key indicators to screen employment and social performances of participating Member States. The scoreboard serves as a reference framework to monitor ‘societal progress’ and it should detect in a timely way the most significant employment and social challenges as well as progress achieved over time. This monitoring tool would allow as well benchmarking successful outcomes to ensure overall improvement.
Supported by Eurostat
Eurostat is the provider of the data for the majority of the indicators of the social scoreboard. These data come from different sources, mainly social statistics such as the EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) or the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC). The use of these high-quality sources allows valid comparisons between Member States and to identify trends over time.
Highlights
Explore data for your country at a glance
To familiarise yourself with the the Pillar, we provide you a social scoreboard of the indicators supporting the Pillar and help you to find out how your country is performing.
This factsheet presents a graphical overview of the key indicators which are used to compare Member States’ performance.
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Explore Further
Social scoreboard - visualisation tools
With this tool from the Joint Research Centre you can visualise trends and compare Member States using graphs and heatmaps.
Employment and social inclusion indicators
Have a look at our website section providing an overview and relevant datasets on employment and social policies in the EU.