The EESC's recommendations on the reform and investment proposals formulated as part of the 2025-2026 European Semester cycle

Key points

The EESC:

• calls for the implementation of the single market to be fully integrated into the European Semester and the CSRs, together with political accountability for the enforcement of single market rules;
• firmly rejects the logic of punitive macroeconomic conditionality and recommends a structure of positive incentives, in which the Semester identifies strategic bottlenecks and the MFF provides targeted support to address them;
• acknowledges the growing importance of defence resilience and readiness and calls for the establishment of a regulatory environment offering legal certainty and support to mobilise investment in EU-coordinated capabilities;
• highlights that fiscal space should be created to achieve the EU’s common social objectives and, in particular, to contribute to the Social Investment Hub recently launched by the European Commission;
• underlines in particular that social issues are often undervalued in CSRs, and believes that government action will need to be mandated and strengthened in order to trigger the necessary dynamism at national level, with a view to accelerating the design, implementation and delivery of reforms, as well as their democratic evaluation;
• recommends that the involvement of social partners and civil society organisations be strengthened (with a view to enhancing the partnership principle step by step as the governance of the MFF and the European Semester converge) by transforming this involvement from a quasi-procedural requirement into a substantive driver of policy success;
• calls on the Commission to improve both the quality and the timing of the information and consultation processes within the European Semester. This includes investing in capacity-building for civil and social dialogue, strengthening consultation processes and improving their timelines, improving access to transparent and comparable data, and establishing a European code setting out how to conduct consultations within the framework of the European Semester and how to draft and implement national plans, in accordance with national practices and social dialogue frameworks;
• calls for the introduction of a mandatory assessment of the quality and impact of the partnership. This should examine the extent to which their input has shaped final operational programmes. This must be paired with a radical simplification of delivery mechanisms, co-designed with managing authorities, regional bodies, social partners and civil society organisations, to ensure that audit and monitoring systems are proportionate and respect the principle of shared management without imposing excessive bureaucratic duplication.

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