A report on strengthening EU social dialogue by Ms Andrea Nahles, Special Advisor on Social Dialogue to Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, has just been published.

Thanks to her experience of social dialogue processes and labour market policies, as well as to numerous meetings with and contributions from social partners in the last six months, Ms Nahles highlights in this report the main issues at stake and proposes a set of recommendations and initiatives that will feed the Action Plan to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights.

Key proposals

Ms Nahles proposes to:

• create a new award for innovative social dialogue and an new programme for young future leaders of social partner organisations;
• step up the involvement of social partners in the European Semester, including the national Recovery and Resilience Plans;
• improve the consultations of social partners on new Commission initiatives by appointing in each Directorate General a social dialogue coordinator;
• review the workings of the Tripartite Social Summit and the Social Dialogue Committee;
• establish a transparent process based on clear criteria on how the Commission will handle future requests of EU social partners to implement their agreements into EU law;
• promote national registries for collective agreements;
• provide additional and targeted support for national social partners;
• set-up a platform for the exchange of best practice on social dialogue with support from the Commission;
• invite social partners to have more dialogue on future oriented subjects.

Background

Strengthening and promoting social dialogue and collective bargaining through capacity building is an important objective of the European Commission.

In July 2020, Commissioner Nicolas Schmit appointed Ms Andrea Nahles, former German Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, as special advisor on social dialogue and asked her to produce a report on how this can be achieved.