On Wednesday, 11 December, the Commission for Economic and Social Policy (ECOS) of the Committee of the Regions held its 21st meeting. The meeting saw adoption of three opinions: opinion on Commission's proposal for a regulation on European long-term investment funds, opinion on Commission's communication on strengthening the social dimension of the economic and monetary union, and a revised opinion on new draft guidelines on state aid for rescuing and restructuring firms in difficulty.
The social dimension of the economic and monetary union (EMU) will be among European Commission's top priorities in the period to come, therefore the opinion of local and regional representatives will provide a valuable input in the discussion. Members of the Committee of the Regions called for better coordination of economic and social policies between the European and national levels of government under the European Semester but also pointed out that the social dimension of the EMU should not entail a harmonisation of social systems or transfer of national competences to the EU in the field of social models. Also, CoR members called the European Commission to further develop the new scoreboard of key employment and social indicators in order to fully capture the social situation and social trends in the Member States, including indicators already in existence at local, regional and national level.
The discussion was followed by a presentation of the Gender Equality Index, a measurement tool developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality which combines equality indicators in domains such as work, money, knowledge, time, power and health into a single user-friendly and easily interpretable measure. Finally, the members were presented the results of the CoR survey Towards a mid-term assessment of Europe 2020 from the standpoint of EU cities and regions, launched by the CoR's EU2020 Platform Steering Committee.
The EA group coordinator for the ECOS commission is Mr Witold Krochmal, member of the City and Municipal Council of Wołów (Poland).
The next meeting of the ECOS commission will take place on 18 February 2014 in Brussels. It will discuss new labour directive on seafarers and the European Council's recommendations on a quality framework for traineeships.
