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.
This opinion underlines that by creating a fertile ground for women entrepreneurship and the adequate financial and legislative instruments, such as gender budgeting, we can create an inclusive financial ecosystem in the EU and Member States and advance faster towards gender equality. It suggests that diversity of teams with a specific focus on women should be a criterion for receiving public funding. This Opinion also calls for an ambitious vision from the European Commission and the European institutions on gender budgeting and gender lens investing. It suggests that the EC publishes a gender impact assessment of the annual EU budget and creates a task force to include gender mainstreaming EU objectives in the next MFF and in the mid-term review of the current MFF.
EESC opinion: Gender lens investing as a way to improve gender equality in the European Union
The EESC strongly believes in the importance of the next Semester cycle as a key instrument for implementing the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
However, it is still concerned about the lack of clarity in most Member States as regards their National Recovery and Resilience Plan governance systems and the distribution of responsibilities for their implementation.
The EESC would also draw attention to the need to measure progress in implementation, for which good monitoring indicators are needed; in this connection it welcomes the "Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard" initiative.
Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for a strong industrial policy to avoid dependence on other economic zones for many products and services.
The EESC wants to see real action in this respect by Member States, in terms of investment in education, infrastructure and industrial policy to raise employment and boost European industry.
Teleworking has the potential to support work-life balance and should be a means of promoting gender equality. For this, the burden of the unpaid care and domestic work performed by women must be fully shared with men. Then, the rules applying to the workplace must be applied to the home office, including on health and safety and protection against harassment and violence. As there is no consolidated European framework on telework, it is necessary to assess existing rules' effectiveness. Social partners should review the 2002 Framework Agreement on Telework and give it a new impetus.
EESC opinion: Teleworking and gender equality - conditions so that teleworking does not exacerbate the unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work between women and men and for it to be an engine for promoting gender equality
The EESC describes integration as a dynamic process, involving both migrants and the receiving society. It believes that migration challenges should be addressed in a holistic manner. Gender equality should become one of the key pillars in integration. Migrant families and parents should be involved in the local and school community as from the early stages of reception. On language training, the EESC believes that this should foresee cultural exploration and involvement in the community and society, as well as guidance and information to migrants on the advantages and the aims of language training. In view of the disparities that exist in Member States with regard to language teaching, the EESC calls for common EU guidelines for language training, which can help ensure a unified and holistic approach.
EESC opinion: Integration of women, mothers and families with a migrant background in the EU Member States and target language levels for integration (Exploratory opinion at the request of the German presidency)
This opinion, requested by the German Presidency of the Council, makes the following main recommendations:
- data collection and monitoring of diversity policies in the labour market must be improved at all levels;
- the principles of diversity management must be integrated into EU rules and generalised;
- more funds should be allocated to diversity management, in order to support the work of civil society organisations working with racialized groups and the diversity policies put in place by the social partners;
- to tackle the underutilisation of migrants' skills and increase their participation in the labour market, these need to be further recognised. In addition, migrants should benefit from free and universal training, including language courses;
- migrants should be active, not only in the labour market, but also in politics;
EESC opinion: Diversity management in the EU Member States (Exploratory opinion at the request of the German presidency)