Blog: From Austerity Back to Legitimacy? The European Pillar of Social Rights: A Policy Brief

Since the financial crisis began and the EU's response to it included wider austerity in a number of countries, there have been doubts among many citizens that the EU is still committed to prosperity and rising living and working standards.

The launch of the initiative in March 2016 to create a ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ was an attempt to address this concern. In the authors view, the Pillar must include binding and high-profile pledges - on minimum wage and minimum income - in order to address citizens' concerns and for the EU to move on from austerity back to legitimacy.

The authors reflect on the policy process and proposals to date. It explains why a High-Level Conference on the Pillar held in late January 2017 was the most important staging-post to date. The authors make proposals for orienting the Pillar initiative towards delivering dignity, autonomy and social justice in the EU and evaluate the constitutional implications, especially in terms of EU competence, of the commitments to introduce EU measures on minimum pay and income, and to restrict the Pillar to the euro-area states.

The Pillar initiative seems likely to feed into the Commission White Paper on the Future of Europe launched in March 2017 which will be followed by a series of reflection papers of which the first mentioned is developing the social dimension of Europe. Accordingly it is an important new policy juncture for Social Europe which deserves analysis and input.

ESO: Find further information on this topic in ESO http://www.europeansources.info/advSearchLink?keyword=European%20Pillar%20of%20Social%20rights%20&searchTerm

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