The EESC issues between 160 and 190 opinions and information reports a year.
It also organises several annual initiatives and events with a focus on civil society and citizens’ participation such as the Civil Society Prize, the Civil Society Days, the Your Europe, Your Say youth plenary and the ECI Day.
Here you can find news and information about the EESC'swork, including its social media accounts, the EESC Info newsletter, photo galleries and videos.
The EESC brings together representatives from all areas of organised civil society, who give their independent advice on EU policies and legislation. The EESC's326 Members are organised into three groups: Employers, Workers and Various Interests.
The EESC has six sections, specialising in concrete topics of relevance to the citizens of the European Union, ranging from social to economic affairs, energy, environment, external relations or the internal market.
Digital agenda in general is one of the tools to address the current crisis. E-procurement specifically brings modernisation, innovation and less market fragmentation. The EESC opinion gives in-depth analysis of the current state in the MS, puts forward concrete solutions and gives an objective judgement of the EC strategy for e-procurement.
The opinion is interesting to national and local public administrations and to the private sector as well.
The EESC calls for greater relevance to be given to economic, social and cultural rights, in particular to the protection of labour standards enshrined in the ILO Conventions which it considers a key pillar to democracy development.
Financing instrument for the promotion of democracy and human rights worldwide
The Commission proposal for a directive on the enforcement of the directive on posting of workers is one of the proposals intended on the one hand to strengthen the rules on posting of workers and on the other to codify the existing legislation governing the right to take collective action in cross-border situations. The EESC welcomes the intention to enforce the existing directive, focusing on better implementation and effective administrative cooperation among Member States. The original Directive plays a key role in promoting a climate of fair competition between all service providers (including those from other Member States) by guaranteeing both a level playing-field and legal certainty for service providers, service recipients, and workers posted for the provision of services.
"The opinion is therefore based on the realisation that the handicap beleaguering Europe now is not so much delays in building its internal market as the need to establish a strong economic, industrial and technological identity in the context of globalisation. The EESC believes that discussion therefore needs to consider all the costs of non-Europe resulting from the failure to complete European integration.
The approach advocated in the opinion seeks to reduce costs, optimise expenditure, maximise opportunities and provide an appropriate response for meeting current challenges and finding a positive way out of the crisis which will benefit everyone.
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The EESC is of the opinion that the proposal for a regulation on ship recycling is a rather pale reflection of the previous green paper and the communication on the same subject. The two previous documents provided an impeccable analysis of ship recycling problems in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and expressed the view that robust measures were needed to tackle the unacceptable conditions in these countries. The measures proposed in the proposal for a regulation do not however solve these problems. The EESC can only conclude that the political will is manifestly absent.