Social dialogue, the negotiations and discussions between the social partners, employers and trade-unions organisations plays a pivotal role in the European society. It is at the heart of Europe’s economic and social model, enabling parallel progress on the economic and social fronts. It can play a key role in helping the EU reach its Lisbon target of becoming the world’s most competitive economy by 2010, according to the European Commission. In its latest Communication on the issue, the Commission has called for ‘a Partnership for Change’, involving more targeted effort, promoting awareness and understanding of the results of the European social dialogue and increasing capacity.
Social dialogue has seen several positive developments, such as the move towards greater autonomy and the introduction of so-called ‘new generation’ texts, in which the European social partners make recommendations to their members and follow them up at the national level. The social partners have adopted over 300 joint texts to date, on a large variety of subjects.
The Commission’s Communication urges the social partners to ensure that social dialogue leads to concrete results. It encourages them to raise awareness of their texts, calls for more transparency and effectiveness of the texts (for example by putting them into easily understandable language), urges following up on their progress and suggests harmonizing categories for their texts. The quality of industrial relations at national level is also becoming an important precondition for the effectiveness of the European social dialogue.
The Commission would specially like to see progress made by the social partners in the three main areas identified in the recent Employment Task Force report: improving labour force adaptability, investing in human capital and job quality, and attracting more people to the labour market.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/news |
