Activities of Laura AGEA related to 2015/2330(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on European Semester for economic policy coordination: Employment and Social Aspects in the Annual Growth Survey 2016 PDF (489 KB) DOC (168 KB)
Amendments (36)
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 34 a (new)
Citation 34 a (new)
- having regard to the report of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on establishing a European Platform to enhance cooperation in the prevention and deterrence of undeclared work (A8-0172/2015)
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 34 b (new)
Citation 34 b (new)
- having regard to its legislative resolution of 8 July 2015 on the proposal for a Council decision on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States,
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas unemployment has been diminishing since 2013 thanks to supportive macroeconomic policies and the impact of structural reforms; whereas it nevertheless remains too high, currently affecting 9.9 % of active citizens, i.e. 23 million Europeans, about half of them being long-term unemployed;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
A a. whereas in order to reduce unemployment it is essential to take into account specific microeconomic circumstances and outline structural reforms whose social impact must be assessed before they enter into force;
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
B a. whereas many young people do either enroll for additional graduate studies in an effort to escape unemployment or leave their home country to seek jobs in other Member States; whereas these two cases are not covered by national statistics on youth unemployment; whereas the actual unemployment rate might therefore be higher than the official one;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas about 20 % of active citizens in the EU have only basic skills while 39 % of companies have difficulty finding staff with the required skills, whereas low educational level is one of the key causes of young people becoming NEETs; whereas it is essential to identify the root causes of early school leaving and determine whether the increase of unemployment among parents is likely to lead to an increase in early school leaving cases;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas although atypical or non- standard forms of employment do not in themselves constitute precarious work, it is more likely to be found where contracts of this nature apply, albeit such contracts account for a minority of existing employment relationships; whereas it is necessary to provide for effective control measures in order to address abuse of atypical or non-standard forms of employment;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas one of the five Europe 2020 targets aims at reducing by at least 20 million the number of people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion; whereas almost 123 million people in the EU are in this situation; whereas in 2013 26.5 million children in the EU28 were at risk of falling into poverty or social exclusion; whereas the Europe 2020 targets have not yet been reached so that an immediate review of the EU2020 strategy is needed;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas public debt remains too high in many Member States (the highest figures being for Greece at 167.8 % and Italy at 136 %), impeding growth and making the entire Union more vulnerable to crises; whereas asymmetric shocks have hit mainly those Members States most affected by the economic crises, while even other countries are increasingly showing similar symptoms;
Amendment 108 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas in the next 10 to 15 years 90 % of the world’s growth will come from outside the EU; whereas it is essential to implement industrial and market policies able to increase the global competitiveness of the EU and therefore guaranteeing sustainable and socially inclusive employment;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J
Recital J
J. whereas the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) has already approved 69 projects in 18 countries, and signed 56 operations (with total financing under EFSI of around EUR 1.4 billion ), and this is expected to lead to more than 22 EUR billion in investment and to involve around 71 000 SMEs; whereas these projects involve mostly great infrastructure, while SMEs and micro-enterprises are usually excluded by these funds in spite of their importance as backbone of European economy and generator of quality jobs;
Amendment 116 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital M a (new)
Recital M a (new)
M a. whereas it is essential to review the posting of workers Directive in order to tackle social dumping cases;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. WelcomNotes the fact that the Commission’s Annual Growth Survey (AGS) underlines the need to pay more attention to social fairness in the context of the new macroeconomic adjustment programmes, adding three social indicators (activity rate, youth unemployment and long-term unemployment) in the 2016 Alert Mechanism Report; stresses that the need to invest in social development is not just a means of guaranteeing that economic growth and convergence can be achieved, but must also be a specific target in itself;
Amendment 133 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Notes that good and quality jobs constitute an essential pillar for social fairness, promoting human dignity; believes that in this sense employment and growth must be placed at the centre of EU policies, especially for youth, as a way to construct a more sustainable social European Union; urges Member States to implement and increase policies for youth employment by taking into account young people's aspirations and matching these policies with the actual needs of the job market;
Amendment 168 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Welcomes the Commission´s proposal to enhance the Youth Guarantee at national, regional and local level, and stresses its importance for school-to-work transitions; stresses the need to guarantee suitable forms of collaboration between public and private employment services; regrets however that in some Member States the Youth Guarantee has failed to deliver the expected results; calls for an improvement of this instrument by implementing multi- level actions among all the relevant parties (young people, enterprises and educational institutions);
Amendment 175 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. calls on the Commission to ensure the close monitoring of the use of EU funds;
Amendment 181 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6 a. Stresses that long-term unemployed lack often even the minimum financial resources to meet the most basic needs of daily life; believes therefore that professional requalification should be preceded and paralleled by financial measures such as minimum income, which will enable long-term unemployed to meet the most urgent needs of daily life while struggling for their professional requalification;
Amendment 183 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Recalls that the integration of long-term unemployed individuals is crucial for their self-confidenceurvival and future development and is key to fighting poverty and guaranteeing the sustainability of national social security systems;
Amendment 238 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Calls on the Member States to gradually shift taxes from labour to otherless detrimental sources, and to implement tax rules that foster incentives to entrepreneurship and employment creation, especially for highly qualified young people, in order to boost research and innovation projects within European enterprises; urges Member States to cut red tape in order to promote youth entrepreneurship;
Amendment 256 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Calls on the Member States to modernise their current social protection systems, in order to guarantee their sustainability in the face of expected ageingtaking ageing into account; considers that pension schemes should be linked not only to life expectancy but also to other social and labour factors, while not jeopardising the sustainability of public finances;
Amendment 266 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Calls on the Member States to examine the persistence of low fertility rates in the EU; calls on the Commission to promote family-friendly policies that enhance parents’ capacity to ensure their children’s wellbeing; encourages the Member States to consider applying more favourable fiscal differentiation in line with the number of children in a family; calls on the Commission to provide families with assistance not only by means of financial support but also in the form of high quality services;
Amendment 276 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Underlines the need to promote sustainable and inclusive growth leading to the creation of more and better jobs and tangible prospects for young people in particular, in order to respond to the internal and external challenges facing the EU;
Amendment 282 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to focus on SMEmicro, small and medium size enterprises as a fundamental key for sustainable and inclusive development; urges the Member States to implement tax schemes that favour innovative start-ups and the facilitation of job creation by SMEs, and to develop mechanisms that might impel such enterprises to achieve or operationalise in an international dimension; underlines therefore the need to implement comprehensive and homogeneous industrial policies at the EU level in order to enable it to face the challenges posed by non-EU competitors;
Amendment 295 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Points out that enterprises in the social economy face as many difficulties as traditional enterprises in obtaining public or private financing; underlines the need to give them more support, especially as regards access to the different forms of financing, such as European funds; underlines also the need to cut red tape in order to support social enterprises;
Amendment 306 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. WelcomNotes the resultsintroduction of the EFSI in the first year of its implementation and its role of rewarding the best projects at European level; calls on the Commission to ensure that all Member States make use of the possibility of accessing this fund;
Amendment 311 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Points out that investment priorities must be oriented to infrastructural projects where these are clearly needed in order to ensure social fairness or enhance sustainable growth; calls on the Commission to require both a prior presentation of the expected social and economic outcomes of any EU-funded investment project and its subsequent monitoring and evaluation; highlights nonetheless the short-term sustainability of these jobs as well as the heavy impact produced on the environment by these projects;
Amendment 316 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Stresses, taking into account Member States’ difficulties in fully using European funds, that the EU must guarantee proper and better use of its investments, which need to be matched to its priorities, as well as the efficient management of its resources, and must also cut red tape with regard to access, implementation and evaluation; calls on the Commission to ensure the close monitoring of the use of EU funds;
Amendment 320 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. WelcomNotes the Commission’s call on Member States to increase their social investments, especially in healthcare, childcare, housing support and rehabilitation services; calls on enterprises and other eligible beneficiaries to make better use of the investment mechanisms provided by European funds and projects having direct application; calls furthermore on the Commission to ensure that EU recommendations are properly implemented by Member States;
Amendment 333 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Agrees on the need to develop a process of upward economic and social convergence in order to foster social and economic cohesion between Member States and their regions, but points out that this must be viewed as a goal of a common project in which social dialogue plays a key role; underlines the necessity to involve all the relevant stakeholders so that their needs are prioritized;
Amendment 351 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Stresses that the Europe 2020 strategy still maintains its pertinence, and calls on the Member States to reinforce its implementation on the groundtargets have not yet been reached, while the living conditions of many EU citizens keep worsening; asks the Commission and the Council to more closely monitor its global and national implementation; considers it necessary to start projecting a post-Europe 2020 scenario;
Amendment 359 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Calls on the Member States to implement and monitor more efficient forms of social protection systems and income support, in order to ensure that these systems offer a minimum standard of living for the unemployed and those at risk of social exclusion, while guaranteeing that such mechanisms do not perpetuate social dependency and constitute an incentive to education or entering the job market; calls therefore on Member States to set levels of minimum income in accordance with national practice and proportionate to the social and economic situation;
Amendment 368 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Calls on the Member States to implement the necessary measures for the inclusion of refugees; points out however that these measures can be effective only if shared and implemented equally by all Member States; stresses that such an approach will require the allocation of funds that, in so fragile a situation, cannot be provided solely by Member States; calls on the Commission to provide the funding required to develop such a strategy as part of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF);
Amendment 384 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to work together on removing the obstacles to fair labour mobility, ensuring that EU mobile workers are noteither exploited nor treated abusively;
Amendment 399 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. WelcomeRegrets the Commission recommendation on the euro area, which consolidates the joint analysis and definition of strategies of the social and economic dimensions of Member States under EMU, stressis still based on the dogma of fiscal consolidation, the irreversibility of the single currency and the neoliberal policy prescriptions, which clearly fail to support economic growth, employment and convergence ing the need for these criteria to be reconciledeuro area, thereby prolonging the never-ending economic and social crisis;
Amendment 417 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. WelcomNotes the fact that the Commission has clearly distinguished a European and a national phase with regard to the European Semester; stresses the need for closer coordination between the European institutions in the design, implementation and evaluation of the European strategy for growth; calls on the Commission to establish a clear agenda in this respect, also involving the social partners and the national parliaments;
Amendment 425 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
33. Believes that, in order to match European and national policies on growth and guarantee their suitability on the ground, it is crucial to strengthen the role of the social partners at both European and national level; stresses that, in order to progress with upward convergence and balance competitiveness and fairness, social dialogue must be pursued in all the phases of the Semester; reminds however that the social dialogue is important but not sufficient in order to actually implement growth and employment oriented policies, while an immediate exemption from existing budgetary rules concerning productive investments and minimum income is essential;