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.
The Committee maintains that lessons need to be learned from recent economic and financial crises and a fresh approach adopted to ensure more effective supervision by national, European and international authorities and increased accountability of financial institutions.
The Committee supports the measures aimed at strengthening banks' capital structure and their ability to finance the economy.
What changes for Europe's banking sector with the new financial rules?
The opinion makes a contribution to analysis and proposals on an issue that the European institutions should deal with more energy, cohesion and above all with a clear and definite will to eradicate the phenomenon.
The EESC welcomes the Commission proposal but highlights the fact that it can only be one component of dedicated financial instruments for social businesses. The Committee reminds the Commission that some elements of the proposal have to be clarified in order to allow such funds to be successful, both for the financial community and for the final beneficiaries.
EESC opinion: European Social Entrepreneurship Funds
The EESC is fully supportive of the revised directive and it finds much in the regulation which it can support. The EESC has a major concern about the applicability of the regulation to SMEs and it recommends that the more radical proposals be revised.
EESC opinion: Annual accounts and consolidated accounts - Audit - public interest entities
The opinion deals with European Venture Capital sector, which is closely linked to Europe's global competitiveness. The growth of this sector is an objective of the overall Europe 2020 Strategy and also one of the key priorities of the SME action plan. The EESC welcomes the regulation but draws attention to several limitations, which may weaken the anticipated impact.