The EESC welcomes as such the Commission's Social Investment Package and the shift in approach it represents. However, the EESC considers that the question of financing remains largely unanswered. Better use of the European structural and investment funds and the best possible targeting of the measures are certainly to be welcomed, but will certainly not be enough to achieve the desired policy shift.
Download — EESC opinion: Social Investment Package
The international economic and financial crisis exposed the structural limitations and contradictions in EMU, depriving the euro of its propensity to attract. The EESC believes that the single currency will be unsustainable unless we achieve convergence between the economic capacities of the euro area countries and improve overall competitiveness, objectives which require economic as well as political commitment. The Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance stresses stability without proposing joint financial instruments for recovery and employment. Europe needs to go back to generating wealth in order to redistribute it fairly. Briefly, these are the EESC's four recommendations for completing the euro framework, i.e.
Download — EESC opinion: Where is the euro headed?
The opinion will seek to examine how trade relations with the region can best be developed by means of a first example country, which is Morocco. Trade relations with Morocco stand out as a priority because the EU currently has the closest trade links with Morocco of all the countries in the region.
The EESC welcomes the Youth Employment Package. It recommends, whenever possible, the age limit for access to the scheme be increased to 30, to cover young people who leave university later or those who are still in a transition phase from education to employment and are still at risk of losing contact with the labour market. There is also need to improve the conditions for offering traineeships and ensure their quality.
The Committee is delighted of the process to update and modernise the guidelines on public aid for businesses in disadvantaged areas and calls on the Commission to make EU policies more consistent with competition policy. The Committee requests that the new guidelines on state aid for the regions give Member States a flexible cross-sectoral instrument and asks for the adoption of more flexible parameters that are better tailored to a dramatically changing economic context.
Download — EESC opinion: The Internal Market and State aid for the regions
Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilisation in the union
The EESC welcomes the draft proposal for a seventh Environment Action Programme (EAP). The decision of the Council and of the Parliament establishes an environment policy consensus among the EU's decision-making institutions on how serious the environmental situation remains, that there are significant deficiencies in the implementation of European environment law, that the efforts made to date to solve current and future problems have been inadequate, and on what action needs to be taken in environment policy in the period up to 2020.
Download — General Union Environment Action Programme to 2020
Up to 50% of food gets wasted in EU households, supermarkets, restaurants and along the food supply chain each year, while 79 million EU citizens live beneath the poverty line and 16 million depend on food aid from charitable institutions. The proposed own-initiative opinion should give impetus to draw up at the European level a coordinated strategy, combining EU-wide and national measures, to improve the efficiency of food supply and consumption chains and to tackle food wastage as a matter of urgency.
The EESC is convinced that "good" and thus "sustainable" business management must be built on the legal structures and practices of employee involvement based on information, consultation and, where applicable, co-determination. The "sustainable company" as a business management concept entails that the "voice" of employees is respected in business decisions and a "fair relationship" between employees, management and owners. A set of tools already exists for the obligatory involvement of employee representatives at national and European level. These provisions should be consolidated and applied generally in EU law, and in particular definitions of information, consultation and participation should be standardised. A new stage in this debate is marked by the European Parliament's resolution of 15 January 2013 on minimum standards for restructuring.
Download — EESC opinion: Employee influence and participation
