Opinions

In this own-initiative opinion, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is  addressing the growing disparities in healthcare access across the EU. These inequalities, exacerbated by inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, disproportionately affect vulnerable groups such as low-income households, people with disabilities, children, and older people. The opinion calls for urgent action to ensure equitable access to healthcare and long-term care, in line with the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), and proposes concrete policy recommendations to strengthen healthcare systems and reduce barriers to care.

In the current context of multiple crises, in addition to digital challenges, urges the EU institutions and Member States to act on the EESC’s proposals on social and civil dialogue to engage individual citizens in democracy in general. It proposes to work closely with the Commission in the creation, governance and regular operation of a civil society platform and to act as a hub and custodian for public and organised civil society participation, and recalls that the Conference on the Future of Europe explicitly calls for the EESC’s institutional role to be enhanced and for it to be empowered as a facilitator of participatory democracy activities, such as structured dialogue with civil society.

In this opinion, the EESC is presenting several recommendations to mitigate the effects of the cost-of -living crisis. These include:

• investment in people and the economy, fair taxation, quality and affordable public services and  targeted support for the most vulnerable;
• short- and long-term industrial policy and efforts to boost competitiveness;
• stronger use of social dialogue, collective bargaining, and civil dialogue to address labour market challenges;
• wage and minimum wage increase as way of protection;
• more investments in  education as a powerful preventive tool against exclusion, marginalisation, and inequality