The EESC has asked the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU to push forward with the proposal to make the Social Progress Protocol a binding legal instrument to help strengthen and preserve social rights in Europe

The European Economic and Social Committee has voiced its agreement with recent proposals to amend the EU Treaties to include the Social Progress Protocol (SPP), an instrument which would give priority to fundamental social rights over economic freedoms in the event of conflict and in EU policies. This would ensure legal certainty and equal treatment of workers in all Member States.

In an exploratory opinion requested by the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU, the EESC said the SPP would secure social progress by promoting and safeguarding the highest standards of social rights in all EU policies and preventing backsliding.

The opinion was adopted at the EESC plenary session on 15 June by 132 votes to 102 with 7 abstentions. However, it did not receive the backing of the EESC Employers' Group, which tabled a counter-opinion opposing the inclusion of the SPP in primary EU law. The counter-opinion was rejected but received more than a quarter of the votes cast and is therefore appended to the main opinion.

The rapporteur for the opinion, Maria del Carmen Barrera Chamorro, said: "The SPP would uphold the principle of not backsliding in respect of social standards. It would prevent any policies being adopted which would run counter to the interests of people, which is what happened with the austerity policies."

"Now, more than ever, we have to be on our guard to make sure that we defend social and civic rights and that they are uniformly applied across the entire EU. They have to be treated as more important than the free market, especially in cases of dispute," said co-rapporteur Diego Dutto.

The EESC said it saw the Spanish Presidency as a great opportunity to push forward the proposal. It encouraged the presidency to convene a meeting of the Council of Social Affairs Ministers to agree on a joint proposal and plan a specific EU summit to adopt it.

The SPP was first proposed by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in 2008 in response to European Court of Justice rulings in favour of economic freedoms. The call was taken up again last year in the conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), with the European Parliament adopting a resolution calling for the SPP to be incorporated into the EU Treaties.

The EESC Employers' Group said that they believed that social and economic rights should enjoy the same level of protection and that the SPP would be in serious danger of undermining the very basis for social progress. (ll)