Activities of Marije CORNELISSEN related to 2013/2158(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on the European Semester for economic policy coordination: Employment and Social Aspects in the Annual Growth Survey 2014 PDF (268 KB) DOC (129 KB)
Amendments (25)
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas the high – and, in some cases, growing – tax wedge, especially for low- wage- and second-income-earners, remains an issue in a considerable number of Member States and is increasing inequality; whereas the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently pointed out that there is scope to tax better and more progressively in order to enhance the legitimacy of the consolidation effort while doing more to promote growth and bring in additional revenue along the way; whereas there is a need to shift the tax burden away from labour towards other forms of sustainable tax such as environmental taxation;
Amendment 56 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Q
Recital Q
Q. whereas, despite the urgency of the situation, the EU is failing to achieve almost all of the Europe 2020 targets, and whereas progress in the Member States in delivering on the Europe 2020 objectives has been disappointing; whereas the commitments made in the 2013 national reform programmes and the corresponding recommendations are insufficient to meet most of the EU-level targets;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital R a (new)
Recital R a (new)
R a. whereas arrangements are lacking to ensure that the European Council respects the position of the European Parliament before it yearly adopts the priorities proposed by the Commission in the Annual Growth Survey;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 a (new)
Paragraph -1 a (new)
-1 a. Expresses its deep concerns of the limited role of the European Parliament in the formulation of economic priorities in the European Semester; deplores that little progress has been made by the Commission and Council to strengthen democratic scrutiny of the economic policy guidance;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 b (new)
Paragraph -1 b (new)
-1 b. Calls on the Commission and the Council to enter into an Interinstitutional Agreement with Parliament in order to give Parliament a full role in the drafting and approval of the Annual Growth Survey and the Economic Policy and Employment Guidelines.
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Welcomes the fact that this year, for the first time, the draft Joint Employment Report annexed to the Annual Growth Survey (AGS) includes a scoreboard for employment and social policies, which will help to strengthen the monitoring of employment and social developments as part of macroeconomic surveillance within the European Semester; considers that this represents an acknowledgment of the needshould impact policy guidance in the European Semester in order to reinforce the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union, which is not only desirable, but also necessary in order to address the crisis and prevent serious socioeconomic divergences in the eurozone, thereby enhancing its sustainability;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Considers it regrettable that the employment and social indicators proposed by the Commission are insufficient to cover the Member States’ employment and social situations comprehensively; calls for the scoreboard to include additional indicators, in particular child poverty levels, in-work poverty levels, a decent work index, and a European living wage index, in order to allow proper assessment of the social situation in the EU. The indicators should after consultation of the Parliament be reviewed on a regular basis and where identified, extended with other relevant social indicators;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls on the Commission to use the social scoreboard not only as an analytical tool, but also as a basis for developing concrete indications for the Member States as to how they can fight or prevent unemployment, reduce social inequality, poverty and social exclusion, promote active inclusion and prevent social dumping, which would then feed into the design and implementation of the 2014 country-specific recommendations (CSRs) within the European Semester process; Calls on the Commission to develop a system that triggers preventative and corrective actions once the indicators in the social scoreboard reach thresholds to be defined in agreement with the European Parliament;
Amendment 82 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Highlights the importance of the Eurogroup employment and social affairs ministers meeting prior to Euro Summits,a coherent position between EPSCO and ECOFIN Councils; calls on the Council to consider joint meetings so as to ensure that social and employment concerns are addressed more fully in the discussions and decisions of the eurozone authorities and with a view to contributing to the meetings of heads of state and government of the eurozone ;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Is concerned that more than 20 Member States have reduced education expenditure in relative terms (as a percentage of GDP), thereby jeopardising their growth and jobs potential and their competitiveness; points out that reducing such investment will increase the EU’s structural weakness, given the mismatch between the growing need for high-skilled workers and the fact that in many Member States a high proportion of the workforce is currently low-skilled; Warns that according to Eurostat, almost half of all children whose parents had a low education level were at risk of poverty in the EU27 in 2011, compared with 22% of children residing with parents who had a medium education level and 7% of children with parents with a higher education level. with the largest differences found by Eurostat in Romania (78% of children in a low education level household compared with 2% in a high education level household), the Czech Republic (76% and 5%), Slovakia (77% and 7%), Bulgaria (71% and 2%) and Hungary (68% and 3%).
Amendment 108 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Considers that cohesion policy is essential in helping to reduce internal competitive disparities and structural imbalances; calls on the Commission, as a matter of urgency, to reprogramme unspent structural funding in favour of youth employment programmes and SMEs to ensure in the setting up of the Operational programs that Member States target their structural funds towards job creation and combatting youth employment; calls on the Commission to find special solutions for those countries with very high unemployment rates which will be forced to return EU funds on account of co-financing problems; asks the Commission, to this end, to explore the possibility of excluding Member States’ participation in the co-financing of EU funds or programmes (under heading 1 (‘Sustainable growth’) of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)) from the calculation of their structural deficit as defined in the two-pack;
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Calls on the Commission to apply the frontloading principle to those funds essential for crisis recovery such as the European Sociall fFunds for the 2014-2020 period while monitoring carefully for undesired effects of frontloading such as the risk of automatic de-committment and the impact on the payment profiles for those Member States which have the highest levels of unemployment and are going through processes of deep fiscal consolidation, especially as regards programmes to boost economic growth, employment and strategic investment;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 a (new)
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19 a. Calls on the Council to revise its conclusions of 8 November 2011 that unlike current account deficits, large and sustained current account surpluses should not trigger corrective action by the Excessive Imbalance Procedure; calls for a symmetric and socially just correction of imbalances in the eurozone;
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Warns that SMEs face the highest credit costs and an ever-growing contraction of credit availability; stresses that this is not only hampering growth and job creation in the EU, given SMEs’ considerable potential to create new jobs, but is also exacerbating imbalances in the eurozone, since there has been a worrying accentuation of differences in the cost of bank lending between core and periphery countries; stresses that the rapid completion of a full-fledged European banking union is a prerequisite to remedy this; welcomes the fact that the importance of access to finance for SMEs has been recognised, and urges the Member States to make access to finance for SMEs an absolute priority in their national growth plans; urges the Member States to provide easy access to the EU funds earmarked for that purpose;
Amendment 139 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Calls on the Commission to engage with the Member States in the promotion of crowd funding, peer-to-peer lending and the creation of recyclable -loan vehicles, funded by a combination of official and private resources and/or supported by guarantees issued by European institutions, such as the European Investment Bank, in order to help restore liquidity to households and SMEs as a matter of urgency;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35 a (new)
Paragraph 35 a (new)
35 a. Calls on Member States to present job plans with specific job creation measures, including in particular for the sectors identified by the Commission as having high potential in particular in the health and social care sectors (white jobs), low-carbon, resource-efficient economy ("green jobs") and ICT sector;
Amendment 177 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 43 a (new)
Paragraph 43 a (new)
43 a. Calls on the European Council to add as a new key priority area of the Annual Growth Survey the shift of the tax burden away from labour to pollution and the fight against tax evasion and tax fraud;
Amendment 192 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 51
Paragraph 51
51. Is concerned about the increase in poverty among all age groups since the 2013 European Semester cycle; notes that poverty and social exclusion among 18- to 64-year-olds has increased significantly in two thirds of the Member States in recent years, mainly because of rising levels of jobless or low-work-intensity households and in-work poverty; notes that the risk of poverty and social exclusion in 2012 was much higher (48.8 %) for third-country nationals (aged 18 to 64) than for EU nationals; calls on the Commission and Member States to take urgent action to deliver on the EU 2020 goal on poverty and social exclusion; Urges Commission and Member States to take immediate action to fight child poverty given that in 2011, 27% of children aged less than 18 were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Calls on the Commission to issue recommendations, especially to the Member States where the highest shares of those aged less than 18 were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, Bulgaria (52%), Romania (49%), Latvia (44%), Hungary (40%) and Ireland (38% in 2010):
Amendment 194 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 52
Paragraph 52
52. Welcomes the recognition in the AGS 2014 of the need to tackle the social consequences of the crisis and ensure the financial sustainability of social protection; regrets however that again no concrete and adequate proposals or recommendations were formulated to address this; calls on Member States to reinforce safety nets, ensure the effectiveness of welfare systems and invest in preventive measures; urges the Commission to take account of the impact of the economic adjustment programmes and of macro-economic policy reforms on progress towards the Europe 2020 headline targets in particular in those Member States experiencing financial difficulties and to agree on modifications aimed at bringing the adjustment programmes into line with the Europe 2020 objectives;
Amendment 224 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 59 a (new)
Paragraph 59 a (new)
59 a. Calls on the Member States to commit to annex the results of consultations with civil society organisations and social partners to their National Reform Programmes and Stability and Convergence Programmes, including an explanation how their input has been taken up in these Programmes; Calls on the Commission to coordinate this yearly exercise;
Amendment 226 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 60
Paragraph 60
60. Stresses that all labour market reformsEU policy guidance in the field of social affairs and employment should be based on reinforced coordination of social dialogue at EU level; calls on the Commission and social partners to use outcomes of the macroeconomic dialogue and tripartite social summits as direct input for the AGS, JER and preparation of CSRs; Calls on the Commission to cease any pressure on Member States to decentralise collective bargaining;
Amendment 229 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 61
Paragraph 61
61. SRecalls that good governance of the EMU and its impacts can only be effective if all stakeholders, including social partners and civil society, are involved; stresses that the Troika has confirmed that high-quality participation by the social partners and strong social dialogue, including at national level, are essential for the success of any reforms, and that in reforms of the EMU in particular, the role of the social partners in the new economic governance process, especially the European Semester, should be reinforced; welcomes the Commission’s proposal to involve the social partners more fully in the European Semester process, inter alia in the framework of the Social Dialogue Committee prior to the annual adoption of the AGS; invites the Commission and Member States to ensure the democratic principle of civil dialogue, enshrined in article 11 TEU, through the meaningfull and structured involvement of relevant civil society organisations in economic governance and in particular the European Semester process;
Amendment 231 #
Motion for a resolution
Recommendation -1 a (new)
Recommendation -1 a (new)
Recommendation -1: on the key priority areas of the European Semester The European Parliament calls on the European Council to revise key five priority areas for the European Semester 2014, by adding as a new key priority area fairer tax systems where the tax burden is shifted away from labour to pollution and tax evasion and tax fraud are combatted;
Amendment 243 #
Motion for a resolution
Recommendation 3 – Paragraph 6
Recommendation 3 – Paragraph 6
The Commission should urgently reensure in the setting up of the Operational programmes the unspent Sat Member States target their structural Ffunds in favour of youth employment programs and SMEstowards job creation and combatting youth employment. Calls on the Commission to find special solutions to those countries with very high rates of unemployment, that, due to co-financing problems, will be forced to return the European funds. In this sense asks the Commission to explore the possibility of excluding Member States participation in cofinancing of EU funds or programs, within the heading 1 ‘sustainable growth’ of the Multiannual Financial Framework, from the calculation of the structural deficit as defined in the two-pack;
Amendment 245 #
Motion for a resolution
Recommendation 3 – Paragraph 7
Recommendation 3 – Paragraph 7
The Commission should apply frontloading principle to all those funds for the period 2014-2020essential for crisis recovery such as the European Social Fund for the 2014-2020 period while monitoring carefully for undesired effects of frontloading such as the risk of automatic de-committment and the impact on the payment profiles for those Member States with the highest levels of unemployment and which are going through deep processes of fiscal consolidation, especially for the programmes to boost economic growth, employment and strategic investments;