Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will participate between today and tomorrow in the Porto Social Summit with the aim of proposing to his EU counterparts a more ambitious European social agenda that integrates recovery plans with social cohesion and gender equality.
The Porto Social Summit, organized by the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU, will consist of two parts: a high-level conference today with the participation of European leaders and the social partners, and an informal meeting of EU heads of state or government on Saturday.
The main objective of the meeting will be to address the European Pillar of Social Rights, proclaimed by the EU in 2017 and which sets out twenty key principles for moving towards a social Europe that is “strong, fair, inclusive and full of opportunities in the 21st century”. Last March, the European Commission presented an action plan for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights which sets out three main objectives to be achieved across Europe by 2030: an employment rate of at least 78% in the European Union, at least 60% of adults attending training courses each year and a reduction in the number of people at risk of social exclusion or poverty by at least fifteen million people, including five million children.
The high-level conference, which will conclude with a declaration that will serve as the basis for the work of the informal meeting of heads of state or government the following day, will be held at the Alfândega Congress Center in Porto and will consist of three panels dedicated to employment, training and social welfare. Pedro Sánchez will speak in the panel on employment, in which he will defend a dynamic and inclusive labor market, according to Moncloa sources.
Afterwards, Pedro Sánchez will hold several bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia (others are still to be confirmed) and the day will conclude with an informal dinner organized by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, during which the COVID-19 and the EU’s external relations will be discussed, with special attention to the situation in India.
Saturday’s day will bring together at the Crystal Palace in Porto, in person and telematically (depending on the decision of each of the leaders), the EU heads of state and government to discuss the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights at national and EU level, as set out in the EU Strategic Agenda for 2019-2024. Subsequently, European leaders will meet by videoconference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The meeting will conclude with a final declaration, a draft of which already exists and the details of which were discussed yesterday during the meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee of the European Union (COREPER). According to the aforementioned Moncloa sources, Pedro Sánchez’s objective is to achieve the most ambitious declaration possible.
To this end, the President of the Government will try to introduce the proposals contained in two recent non-papers (unofficial diplomatic documents): the non-paper presented last April 23 by the governments of Spain and Belgium (chaired by the liberal Alexander de Croo) proposing the establishment of a framework for monitoring each country’s social and labor policy indicators similar to that already applied in fiscal policy (Stability Pact) and in macroeconomic imbalances; and the non-paper presented exclusively by Spain on April 27th, in which the EU is asked to raise social spending to the same level as the green and digital transitions, the two main priorities of Brussels, and that the recovery plans after COVID-19 give priority to social cohesion and gender equality.
