notes that the EU and Member States shall aim to promote a high level of employment, improve living and working conditions and achieve proper social protection, including under comparable conditions, for the self-employed;
encourages the EU and Member States, within their respective competences and in keeping with national practices, to adapt social protection systems to cover non-standard work, ensuring sufficient benefits for decent work and a decent life for all workers;
calls for Member States to shift the focus of social protection from workers alone to all Europeans, offering a minimum income for those unable to work, while promoting a return to employment for those who can work.
establish a common framework for fiscal transparency that would set clear, consistent standards for all EU-funded programs, ensuring uniform reporting and easy access to financial data across Member States. The EESC focuses on promoting best practices rather than introducing new regulations;
promote the adoption of participatory budgeting, where citizens have a direct say in public spending decisions, particularly at the local level. The EESC also advocates for incorporating participatory elements into EU-level budgeting processes;
develop accessible digital tools to streamline budget data access, using technologies like data analytics and AI to improve public understanding and engagement with financial information;
stresses that Member States should facilitate inclusive engagement, openness and transparency with civil society, including current host communities and potentially interested host communities, in all areas of RWM. Available funding should be used to increase the capacity of civil society groups, particularly local communities close to nuclear installations, to participate independently in projects and studies to assess participation and transparency practices in RWM.
highlights the increasing challenge of labour and skills shortages in the transport, energy, infrastructure, and digital technology sectors. These sectors are crucial for the prosperity and ecological sustainability of the EU and are central to the European Green Deal as well as to the future competitiveness of the EU.
underlines that geothermal energy production has extremely low greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing the continent’s dependence on fossil fuels and facilitating its decarbonisation, thereby making a significant contribution to achieving the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goals.
recommends creating a dedicated EU investment fund within the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). This fund could be supported by contributions from member states, new EU own resources, and joint debt issuance, and should allocate resources based on clear social criteria;
emphasises the importance of public funding as a catalyst to unlock private investments, particularly in sectors that are not yet profitable, such as green energy and strategic infrastructure like energy grids and hydrogen pipelines;
advocates for complementing the EU’s fiscal rules (Stability and Growth Pact) with a robust investment strategy, ensuring long-term climate and digital transition goals are met without compromising fiscal sustainability;
An ageing society faces distinct challenges compared to a society with a more balanced age distribution. Upholding the right to age with dignity, along with a life-cycle approach is essential to addressing these challenges;
The EESC’s proposals for achieving more sustainable societal development include: striving for higher birth rates, exploiting the full potential of the labour market, making work pay by having high-quality, well-paid and productive jobs, improving working conditions, reforming pension and care systems to ensure accessibility for everyone, enhancing legal migration pathways to attract in particular foreign talent supported by bold integration measures, working towards upward regional and social cohesion and analysing the factors driving people to leave the EU;
The EESC recommends that the European Commissioner for Demography be supported by an appropriate structure within the European Commission, and that a European agency for demography be set up to ensure research and statistics in this field, while at the same time ensuring collaboration with and sufficient financing for existing agencies like Cedefop and Eurofound. This would facilitate the integration of demographic consideration in all relevant policy areas and impact assessments.
believes that Member States and higher education institutions (HEIs) should enhance quality, fairness, equality, and social inclusion in higher education, adapting recommendations to their contexts;
urges the EU to safeguard academic freedom and institutional autonomy;
supports fostering joint programmes among HEIs within and beyond European University Alliance projects, ensuring quality assurance and including all relevant stakeholdersin their implementation;
emphasises the need for broad collaboration among stakeholders to effectively implement the initiatives, particularly highlighting the fundamental values of student and staff participation following the Bologna Process.
underlines that youth participation mechanisms need to be transparent for every stakeholder and that the interests and concerns of young people need to be considered at each stage of the policy-making cycle;
points at the importance of having monitoring and dissemination strategies in place in each youth participation mechanism to inform young people of the impact that their participation has had, including in EU Youth Dialogue (EUYD) processes;
suggests that information on EUYD outcomes should be compiled at pre-agreed intervals and focus on all cycles of the EUYD to be able to track policy and other outcomes linked to particular EUYD cycles.
