Social Agenda Issue 52 - EN

pension, healthcare and long-term care systems. Nevertheless, more efforts are still needed to make sure that people have adequate pensions, i.e. pensions that help maintain their income for the duration of their retirement and prevent old-age poverty (see page 8). Throughout the EU, there needs to be more ownership by the national actors of the reforms called for by the European Semester process. Hungary and Romania in particular must involve more the social partner organisations in policy-making. Other Member States, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, will need to pay attention to the capacity of social partners to play their full role in engaging in employment, social and other relevant policies. Investing in reforms In many ways, the 2018 European Semester cycle reflects a renewed emphasis on the necessity to invest, including in people. This emphasis on social investment is also apparent in the Commission proposals for the 2021-2027 budget EU (see page 14 onwards). For the years 2021-2027, the European Commission wants to strengthen the link between the long-term EU budget and the medium-term European Semester: The Semester will help identify more clearly the EU’s long-term investment priorities and steer EU funding towards them. Alongside the country-specific recommendations, the Commission is therefore due to propose investment-related guidance. It will do so, both ahead of the EU Funds programming process (due to take place in the course of 2020) and half way through the next MFF (in 2024). Beyond education and skills, many other employment and social issues may be singled out for priority investment, such as childcare provisions, improving the quality of public employment services and enhancing the efficiency of social protection in a broad sense, including access to healthcare and pension levels. Breaking the glass ceiling: Equality of opportunities is also about equality between women and men. Fixing the roof Since the creation of the European Semester in 2011, over two-third of the country-specific recommendations formulated every year through this EU economic coordination process have been substantially addressed or fully implemented. To monitor the way EU countries implement the employment and social affairs-related recommendations, the European Commission now uses a new set of social performance indicators (the new “Social Scoreboard”) that was introduced in 2017 as part of the European Pillar of Social Rights (see Social Agenda n°50). In this policy area, some reforms have a high implementation rate, such as those that promote job creation on permanent contracts and address labour market segmentation between full-time open-ended contracts and other forms of employment. On the other hand, recommendations concerning health and long-term care, as well as social inclusiveness and the quality of education, have not yet been sufficiently addressed. Moreover, annual implementation rates are decreasing due to the present positive economic developments. This is an important concern for the Commission, which calls on the Member States to “fix the roof while the sun is shining”. © Belga Image More information: http://europa.eu/!WG77Rx SOC I A L AG E NDA / J U LY 2 0 1 8 / 2 5