The counterfeit goods industry is detrimental to jobs and growth in Europe and deprives governments of billions in tax revenues and threatens health and security of EU workers and citizens. Nevertheless, imports of fake goods have even doubled worldwide within 10 years due to digital trade. Now it is high time for Europe's legal framework to also arrive in the 21st century. The European Commission and the Member States urgently need to adapt their legal frameworks and ensure the necessary controls and market surveillance. Consumers need to be better informed, which is even a specific fundamental consumer right codified in Article 169 TFEU. Both the private and the public sectors need to cooperate in the fight against product piracy.
Better scrutiny and management of food waste, an internationally agreed European history curriculum to combat nationalism, and better knowledge of the EU via the creation of a European day for schools. These were the main recommendations made to policy-makers by the students who took part in Your Europe, Your Say! (YEYS) to overcome the challenges the EU is facing.
You are our present and future, and Europe needs you: with these words, EESC Vice-President Gonçalo Lobo Xavier welcomed 99 young people to the yearly Your Europe, Your Say! event organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The Vice-President encouraged them to use this "unique chance" to mingle with their European peers, apply their foreign language skills, learn about each other and make new friends that can change their lives and perceptions about this magnificent project called European Union.
On 30 March 2017, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) adopted an opinion on the European Commission's proposed directive on business insolvency, which is intended to harmonise preventive restructuring procedures across Europe. While fully supporting the Commission's shift from liquidation to early restructuring in dealing with business insolvency, the EESC proposes a set of measures to help prevent its social damages. In particular, the EESCs suggests introducing a "social warning" mechanism to alert all stakeholders as soon as problems arise, creating specific funds to guarantee the payment of salaries, and making access to a second chance for failing entrepreneurs conditional to full disclosure of financial information.
On 13 March 2017, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held a high-level conference in Rome to mark the sixty-year anniversary of the founding treaties of Europe, signed in Rome itself on 25 March 1957. Rather than celebrating the occasion in pomp, the EESC preferred to focus on the important milestones achieved and, above all, explore three issues that are crucial if we are to overcome the current crisis and guarantee a better future for Europe: tackling growing social inequalities, getting back on track for economic growth and providing an effective response, consistent with its principles, to the challenge of migration.
3rd Migration Forum urges Member States to honour their common agreement on relocating migrants.
We need to change the narrative and disseminate the many good stories as an antidote to the fears and worries spread by right-wing populists. Efforts towards integration need to be accelerated - the city of Mechelen could be a role model of what successful integration can look like. Family reunification is key to proper integration, and so is access to work and basic services. Therefore it is indispensable for Member States to stick to the relocation programme they themselves agreed upon in September 2015. It is unacceptable that 9 Member States did not relocate any refugees. Europe needs solidarity in order to handle this challenge.
Today the EESC adopted an opinion on the outline of a European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) proposed by the European Commission to build "a deeper and fairer Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)" and achieve a "triple A social Europe". The debate took place in the presence of Marianne Thyssen, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, and Maria João Rodrigues, the European Parliament's rapporteur on the EPSR. The opinion sets out the Committee's initial ideas and ...
