Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2004)488 - Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity - PROGRESS - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2004)488 - Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity - PROGRESS. |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2004)488  |
| date | 14-07-2004 |
The Lisbon European Council agreed on a strategic goal for the Union to build a competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy capable of sustaining economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. By dynamically addressing challenges related to rapid change in international competitive conditions, the Social Policy Agenda (SPA) is the Union's roadmap in the employment and social sphere as part of the overall Lisbon Strategy.
In its Communication 'Building our common Future - Policy challenges and budgetary means of the enlarged Union 2007-2013' i, the Commission identified the implementation of the SPA as an important tool contributing to the competitiveness for growth and employment objective of the new financial perspectives. The same Communication calls for a further strengthening of the Social Policy Agenda, in order to face the new challenges common to all Member States and to manage change in the context of enlargement, globalisation and demographic ageing.
To reach the Lisbon objectives, the SPA relies on a combination of instruments, notably legislation, the open method of co-ordination (OMC), European social dialogue, as well as the European Social fund and a number of other financial tools directly managed by the Commission. The present explanatory memorandum only concerns the latter mentioned financial tools and reflects the efforts made to rationalise them.
Contents
The Commission has underlined the importance of using the revision of the legal instruments for the next financial perspectives to create a significant movement towards greater simplicity. Serious consideration was given to all the different options.
One option would have been to discontinue the current financial instruments. However, a high level of employment and of social protection, improved working conditions, anti-discrimination, gender equality, free movement of workers and social dialogue are explicit objectives of the European Union without which the Lisbon policy goals will not become a reality.
Whilst the Member States have the main competence in those areas, modest financial means will remain necessary in the future in their support for a host of reasons:
* Financial means remain necessary to ensure a coherent implementation of the existing acquis, to improve the knowledge and understanding of the situation prevailing in the Member States and to support the promotion of rights, free movement of workers, anti-discrimination and gender equality.
* Community funding in support of the implementation of the OMC in the employment and social area should continue to act as a catalyst by facilitating the definition and implementation of reform measures by Member States in their labour market and social policies and should, as such, bring about important policy developments with modest financial means.
* Adequate financial resources are indispensable to allow the Commission to fully exploit its autonomous Treaty based competence of promoting social dialogue at EU level in line with art. 138. Partnership for change will play a crucial role in giving appropriate responses in terms of harnessing change and economic restructuring.
By investing resources through those three channels, the Union will actively contribute to the Lisbon objectives of competitiveness, more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.
In order to effectively simplify and rationalise the current situation, whilst taking account of the different decision making procedures, it is proposed to structure the employment and social policy activities in two main areas, each corresponding to one budget line and each based on its own decision making process:
1. The first one will take the form of an integrated programme for Employment and Social Solidarity (PROGRESS) covering the period 2007 to 2013. It will be adopted by way of the attached Parliament and Council Decision. This programme incorporates four specific Community Action Programmes currently supporting the implementation of the social policy agenda as well as a number of budget lines in relation to working conditions. Its financial allocation will amount to 628.8 million Euros over the period.
2. The second one entitled 'Sustaining Social Dialogue, free movement of workers and studies and special reports in the social field' will be dealt with in a separate Communication as no legislative decision is needed. This area of activity will cover expenditure based on existing regulations and autonomous powers conferred on the Commission by the Treaty as confirmed in art 49.2.c of the financial regulation and art 33.1 of its implementing rules. This second budget line will amount to 479.9 million Euros over the 2007-2013 period.
It will mainly deal with financial support to promote and facilitate social dialogue at European level. The implication of the social partners in the legislative process is compulsory according to articles 138/139 of the Treaty and they play a fundamental role in the emergence of real European governance. The Commission will therefore continue to encourage and support partnership and social dialogue both at inter-sectoral and at sectoral levels To this end, it will finance activities related to negotiations, information, training and capacity-building of the actors, and the dissemination and promotion of results at all levels.
It will equally financially support activities relating to social analysis and to free movement of workers, notably the EURES network as provided for in part 2 of Council Regulation 1612/68 i.
A further 266.4 million Euros should be foreseen for the financing of the two agencies active in the employment and social area i from 2007 to 2013.
Finally, reflecting the equality goals of the Lisbon agenda, and on the basis of political agreement which has been reached within the Council, the European Council expressed its support for the establishment of a European Gender Institute and invited the Commission to bring forward a specific proposal. The Commission plans to adopt the corresponding Proposal before the end of the year and intends to allocate 52.7 million Euros to it over the 2007-2013 period. The setting up of the institute will be budgetary neutral as this amount has been deducted from the programme PROGRESS. The primary task of the Institute will to provide the Community and its Member States with objective, reliable and comparable information and data on gender equality in order to establish measures in this field. It will also act as a catalyst for developing, analysing and disseminating information that improves gender equality in Europe. The precise scope of its competencies will be carefully defined in the proposal mentioned above as to avoid any overlap with other institutes or agencies.
In order to avoid overlap between the interventions covered by the proposed programme, co-operative exchange and synergy mechanisms will be put in place.
As mentioned above, only a part of the expenditure foreseen for the period 2007-2013 has to be based on an intermediate legislative decision. This is the purpose of the attached Council and Parliament Decision which creates a new Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity (PROGRESS).
The overall objective is reinforcing the initiative role of the Commission in proposing EU strategies; implementing and following-up EU objectives and their translations into national policies; transposing and following-up of EU legislation's application in a coherent way through Europe; promoting the co-operation and co-ordination mechanisms between Member States and cooperating with organisations that represent civil society.
General objectives of the programme have been defined to address this overall objective:
Improving the knowledge and understanding of the situation prevailing in the Member States (and in other participating countries) through analysis, evaluation and close monitoring of policies;
Supporting the development of statistical tools and methods and common indicators in the areas covered by the programme ;
Supporting and monitoring the implementation of EU law and policies objectives in the Member States and assessing their impact;
Promoting networking, mutual learning, and identification and dissemination of good practice at EU level;
Enhancing the awareness of the stakeholders and the general public about the EU policies pursued under each of the 5 sections;
Boosting the capacity of key EU networks to promote and support EU policies.
The objectives set for each section have finally been translated into operational objectives which correspond to the types of supports (analytical and mutual learning activities, awareness and dissemination activities, support to main actors) to be addressed in each policy domain. The operational objectives will correspond to the need to carry out actions, financed at Commission level, to target some specific actors who need to act in this context.
The Programme will be divided in 5 sections corresponding to the 5 main fields of activities:
Employment
Social protection and inclusion
Working conditions
Anti-discrimination and diversity
Gender equality
Section 1 will support the implementation of the European Employment Strategy as stipulated in the Employment Title of the EC Treaty (Articles 125 to 130).
Section 2 will support the implementation of the open method of coordination in the field of social protection and inclusion according to Article 137 as amended by the Nice Treaty which sets a role for the Community to 'support and complement the activities of the Member States' in a range of objectives relevant to social protection notably 'combating of social exclusion' and 'modernisation of social protection systems'.
Section 3 will support the improvement of the working environment and conditions including health and safety at work as enshrined in the Treaty in its article 137 i a) and b).
Section 4 will support effective implementation of the principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation as enshrined in Article 13 of the Treaty. It will furthermore promote the mainstreaming of anti-discrimination in EU policies and the benefits of diversity.
Section 5 will support, on the one hand, an effective implementation of the principle of gender equality and, on the other hand, a better gender mainstreaming in EU policies, as enshrined in Articles 2, 3 2,13 and 141 of the Treaty.
This planned rationalisation of the employment and social policy programmes and budget structure is of direct interest to key stakeholders. Consultations have been organised with social partners and non-governmental organisations.
The ex-ante evaluation of the programme is attached to the present proposal for a Parliament and Council Decision. It has been performed internally by the DG EMPL evaluation unit in cooperation with all units involved in the process of defining the programme.
The evaluation results available show the appropriateness of the different actions supported to achieve the goals set in the Social Policy Agenda. Several innovative approaches have been evaluated. The evaluation results already published are presented in annex 1 of the ex-ante evaluation.
The proposed approach will contribute to the key objective of simplifying instruments both in legal and management terms and of streamlining the budget structure. It will also increase coherence and consistency between and avoid duplication of instruments. Whilst additional human resources will be necessary to cope with future enlargements, a better allocation of the human resources will be achieved by discontinuing smaller budget lines (which are human resources consuming) and regrouping existing programmes into a single, coherent and streamlined programme. This will result in more proportionality between the amount of expenditure and the administrative cost managing it.
The proposed approach will also result in a reduction in the number of budget lines (not including agencies) managed directly by the Commission in the employment and social field from 28 to 2. A single decision would replace the host of decisions currently in place. This would enormously simplify the decision making process. Further to substantially reducing the number of budget lines, rationalisation will also be achieved by reducing and harmonizing the scope of the current four Community Action Programmes. In the implementation of the Programme, the Commission will be assisted by a single Programme Committee, instead of four.
The proposed rationalisation will also benefit the end user as it increases the visibility, clarity and coherence of these instruments. Potential beneficiaries will find it easier to apply for funding under the different sections of the new Programme thanks to the standardised approach and harmonised implementing provisions. As a single project could work towards the objectives of more than one section of the programme, it provides the end user with a 'one stop shop'.
The Decision contains 20 articles.
Article 1 establishes the PROGRESS programme.
Article 2 defines its general objectives, common to the 5 sections.
Article 3 presents the overall structure of the programme which is divided into 5 sections corresponding to the 5 main fields of activity.
Articles 4 to 8 present, for each of the programme's section, a list of operational objectives.
Article 9 defines the different types of actions foreseen under the programme in order to achieve the objectives set in articles 2 and 4 to 8.
Article 10 lists the potential actors of the programme.
Article 11 defines the different methods of application for support which should be used by the actors mentioned in Article 10.
Article 12 sets the implementing provisions of the programme and particularly the role of the Committee referred to in Article 13.
Article 13 foresees that the Commission will be assisted by a management/consultative Committee in order to implement the Programme.
Article 14 foresees the cooperation of the Committee mentioned in Article 13 with other relevant committees either monitoring other programmes or linked to cooperation mechanisms in the framework of the open method of coordination.
Article 15 expresses the need to coordinate and ensure complementarity of actions financed under this Programme with other EU actions not only in the employment and social sphere but also in areas which may have common objectives (education, culture, justice and home affairs...).
Article 16 allows the participation of non EU Member States in this programme namely EEA/EFTA countries, candidate countries associated to the EU, as well as western Balkan countries included in the stabilisation and association process.
Article 17 sets the overall financial amount available for the 7 years programming period. It also foresees a minimum percentage to be allocated to the different sections of the programme.
Article 18 sets the conditions to be respected to ensure the protection of the Communities' financial interests during the implementation of the Programme.
Article 19 foresees the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms which should be put in place to ensure a smooth and effective implementation of the programme.
Article 20 sets the condition under which the Decision will enter into force.