The Section for Employment, Social Affairs and Citizenship (SOC) prepares the EESC's work in a variety of policy areas, such as employment and working conditions, education and training, fundamental and citizens' rights, health, social policy and social rights, gender equality, disability issues, Roma inclusion, migration and asylum, justice and home affairs (including immigration).
The main activities of the section include its work on the fight against and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, fundamental rights and the rule of law, the European Pillar of Social Rights and accompanying measures, the future of work as well as migration and asylum. The SOC section also provides the secretariat for the European Migration Forum (EMF), which the EESC organises together with the European Commission.
More specialised tasks are carried out in the section's permanent bodies, which are the Labour Market Observatory (LMO), the ad hoc group on fundamental rights and the rule of law (FRRL), the permanent study group on immigration and integration (IMI), the permanent study group on disability rights (DIS) and the permanent study group on the inclusion of the Roma (ROMA).