Social Agenda Magazine | Number 50 (January 2018)

The new social dimension

Summary:

A magazine providing information on European employment and social policies, Social Agenda is published four times a year in English, French and German by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.

Twenty years ago, EU leaders gave a special impetus to addressing employment issues together, by accelerating the implementation of the new Employment title introduced into the EU treaties in 1997. In November 2017, their successors met in a special Social Summit, in Gothenburg, to give extra impetus to the European Pillar of Social Rights, which the European Commission had adopted in the form of a Recommendation in April 2017: a programme of principles and action, in the words of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, which now inspires all Commission proposals. The new social dimension reconnects with the way the EU integrated macroeconomic and employment issues in the 1990s but it also goes beyond that: beyond employment, it encompasses the conditions for getting a job in the first place (education, lifelong learning, work-life balance, social housing…). It even involves issues of exclusively national competence, such as wage setting.

Contents:

• Vocational education and training: Apprenticeships - a common understanding
• Employment and social analysis: Fairness and solidarity between generations
• Innovation: Breaking new social ground
• Social policy: Ensuring fairness across the EU
• Special feature: The new social dimension
• EU funding beneficiaries: From jam production to electronic prescriptions
• Other voices: Luk Zelderloo, secretary general, European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities
• Interview: Jeroen Jutte, head of the European Semester coordination unit, DG EMPL

• Alternative Source 1