Opinions

The objective of the opinion, requested by the Romanian Presidency, is to explore which measures and initiatives should be taken at EU and national level in order to promote organised philanthropy and eliminate barriers within the internal market that are hindering the realisation of its full potential, so as to maximize its contribution to EU values, such as cohesion, social justice and European Policies, and to the competitiveness of the European economy.
The opinion is expected to feed into the Romanian presidency programme and into the political priorities for the new Commission.

Gender equality is not only a human rights issue; it is a social and economic necessity for the EU, its Member States and businesses, as it hugely impacts on sustainable growth and GDP, while allowing to use the potential of 51% of the EU population. The EU needs to elevate gender equality to a stand-alone goal with a binding strategy, centred in the following measures: fighting the economic inequality affecting women and the current backlash of their rights; ratifying and implementing the Istanbul Convention on all forms of violence against women (including harassment); addressing once and for all gendered stereotypes, namely through the media; and supporting civil society organisations working for greater gender equality.

The opinion, requested by the Romanian Presidency, aims to look at possible ways through which people can acquire solid knowledge about the European Union, its foundations, procedures and actions, as well as its positive achievements and the concrete benefits it offers. This type of education would contribute towards building citizens' ownership over the European decision-making process and ensure that their vision, needs and priorities are adequately reflected in the European agenda at all levels.

Skills mismatches are one of the biggest challenges that currently jeopardises European growth and sustainable job creation. Future prospects are even more challenging. With the rapid, even revolutionary change of technologies, business models as well as customer expectations, the nature of work is often changing in an unprecedented and almost unpredictable manner. This has brought to light the growing gap between the needs of the businesses and the qualifications, skills and competences of the human resources. Current developments also underline the growing importance of soft and transversal as well as other skills often gained through informal learning. This challenges the current education systems to adapt and also raises issues linked to recognition and validation of the informal education and training.

In this opinion, the Committee endorses, without comments, the Commission's proposal on the resources for the specific allocation for the Youth Employment Initiative.

The objective of the proposal is to adapt the amounts of resources available for economic, social and territorial cohesion set out in Article 91(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1303/20131, the amount of resources for the specific allocation for the Youth Employment Initiative ('YEI') set out in Article 92(5) of that Regulation and the annual breakdown of commitment appropriations reflected in Annex VI of that Regulation to reflect the increase of the resources of the YEI, in line with the adopted budget for 2019. More specifically, commitment appropriations for the specific allocation for the YEI should be increased by an amount of EUR 116,7 million in current prices, bringing the overall amount for 2019 up to EUR 350 million.

Liberal democracy relies on civil liberties and a pluralistic civil society, but considerable political forces in today's Europe are challenging liberal democracy. The social, political and legal framework must allow for a pluralistic civil society. Strong social partners and civil society are needed to defend EU values. The EESC calls for the creation of a Democracy Semester, a European control mechanism, corrective economic measures for non-respect of fundamental EU values, the creation of a European statute for CSOs, or interinstitutional CSO authorisation and, tax incentives to support civil society. Burning social questions must be tackled, ensuring social sustainability and inclusive education.

In this opinion, the EESC notes that a substantial part of the population is still neither working nor included in unemployment statistics, yet carries significant potential for employment and wealth creation. Therefore, it issues a series of concrete recommendations that you can read by clicking on the title of the opinion. 

In each of the 27 EU countries, there are laws or organisational arrangements which exclude some voters with disabilities from participating in EP elections. If the best practices from across all countries were implemented, an ideal system would emerge in which every EU citizen with disabilities not only would have the full possibility to vote but also would be able to choose for themselves the most convenient way in which to vote.