Documents Atanasova, Angelina 9 results

"In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Council agreed to provide major financial support to Member States. Drawing on a combination of the EU's long-term budget (2021–2027) and an additional temporary support system known as ‘NextGenerationEU' (NGEU), the EU has been providing funds to help Member States with the fall-out from the Covid-19 crisis. The so-called ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility' (RRF), at the core of the NGEU, provides financial support to Member States, notably through a combination of grants and loans (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021). Resources made available through the RRF amount to 672.5 billion euros (360 billion euros in loans and 312.5 billion euros in grants – in 2018 prices).

To access the RRF funds, Member States submitted detailed national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs), in which they set out reforms and investments to be completed by 2026. In particular, RRPs are supposed to identify measures in policy areas of European relevance, structured in six pillars, deemed as key to achieving recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and to enhancing the long-term resilience of the EU and of its Member States (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: recital 10): (i) green transition; (ii) digital transformation; (iii) smart, sustainable and inclusive growth; (iv) social and territorial cohesion; (v) health, and economic, social and institutional resilience; and (vi) policies for the next generation, children and young people. In order to assess the adequacy of the RRPs, a set of criteria have been established, including their contribution to the green and digital transitions and to the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), as well as their consistency with the European Semester Country-specific Recommendations (CSRs) which the Member States received in previous years (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: recital 42).

Reforms and investments linked to the RRF's ‘social and territorial cohesion' pillar are expected to help strengthen social dialogue in the Member States (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: recital 14); more generally, in drafting their RRPs, the Member States have been asked to report on how they conducted consultations with relevant national stakeholders, including the social partners and civil society organisations."

"In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, major financial support has been pledged to Member States. This funding draws on the EU's multiannual financial framework and the ‘NextGenerationEU' with, at its core, the temporary ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility' (RRF). While some reporting templates have been newly invented, others are linked to the European Semester.

This report examines how and why the Semester became part of the governance of the RRF. We also ask to what extent this new set-up has changed the power balance among key EU actors (for example, financial and economic actors versus institutional social affairs actors)? Drawing on extensive document analysis and 32 semi-structured elite interviews, the findings suggest that initially, due to the crisis (and desire for fast action), there was a serious risk that EU institutional social actors were losing the prominence they had previously earned. They gradually reclaimed their position as the immediacy of the crisis subsided and a longer-term focus emerged. EU civil servants also engaged with social partners on both sides of industry, even though it is questionable whether this consultation has been really meaningful.

EU civil society organisations (CSOs) have been largely sidelined in the RRF process; and likewise in most Member States, consultation with domestic stakeholders (both social partners and CSOs) has remained insufficient by any standard. The European Parliament was reasonably successful in securing its substantive impact during the RRF negotiations. But it has since failed to insert itself into the approval and assessment procedures applicable to the EU's recovery programme."

"The report explores how 35 European countries monitor social spending through dedicated national frameworks, and investigates the processes assessing the outcomes and effectiveness of public social spending. While these are fairly diverse, the report identifies two broad categories of monitoring practices: within and separately from the overall public spending monitoring framework. The strengths of these frameworks include reliable, timely and precise indicators, mostly on levels of public social spending, as well as comprehensive centralised information systems. Social spending review processes may be recurrent, but are in most cases conducted on an ad hoc basis to respond to specific institutional needs or political circumstances. Supreme Audit Institutions often play a key role in social spending reviews. Monitoring of social outcomes of public spending, such as poverty, inequality reduction or income redistribution, appears to be quite uncommon, and reviews of its effectiveness (i.e. linking social spending to social outcomes) are even rarer."

"Policy implications:
• Meaningful involvement of domestic stakeholders in the implementation of the national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) is key to ensuring the legitimacy of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). This is particularly true for social partners, also in light of the European Commission's intention to relaunch social dialogue at both the national and the European level. While the EU is going through multiple transitions and coping with several ‘crises', strong arrangements to ensure meaningful and effective social partner involvement in policymaking are needed more than ever.
• Despite significant cross-country variation, national trade union involvement in the preparation of RRPs in most of the seven countries included in this analysis was far from satisfactory. Some improvement can be found at the implementation stage, although meaningful involvement is often limited to the implementation of specific measures.
• Several shortcomings are still to be addressed to improve involvement in the implementation of the RRPs. These include, first, a mismatch of expectations as to the nature of the involvement process: specific EU guidance in this respect would be useful. Second, both trade union organisations and national administrations should be provided with sufficient resources to be able to engage in a meaningful dialogue under constant time pressure, during RRP implementation."

"Key points
• Between 2014 and 2022 in the EU27 the employment gap between people with and people without disabilities ranged, on average, from 22.7 to 21.4 percentage points.

• Although policy efforts are continuing to encourage an inclusive employment environment for people with disabilities under the current EU Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021– 2030, several points could be strengthened to improve effective implementation.

• First, structured data collection is needed to make it possible to track the progress of already enacted policies and to identify challenges.

• Second, active engagement of the social partners would improve the implementation of employment-related policies at the workplace.

• Third, gender mainstreaming must be integrated into all employment inclusive measures to address the specific needs of women and men with disabilities."