• Areas of Expertise:
  • Business and society
  • Diversity
  • Employment status
  • Gender
  • Health
  • Human capital
  • Industrial change
  • Industrial relations
  • Labour market
  • Participation at work
  • Population and society
  • Quality of life
  • Quality of work
  • Social cohesion
  • Social protection
  • Time
  • Work-life balance
  • Work organisation

Social Policy Agenda

The Commission launched its latest Social Policy Agenda 2006-2010 in February 2005. Its predecessors were the Social Policy Agenda 2000-2005 and the Social Action Programme 1998-2000. Further to the Social Policy Agenda 2000-2005, the Commission established a High-Level Group whose mandate was to identify the main challenges and opportunities facing the European Union over the period 2006-2010 in the field of employment and social policy. The findings of this group would contribute to the development of the next Social Policy Agenda 2006-2010. The three main challenges facing the European Union that the group identified were: enlargement, the ageing of the population and globalisation.

The new Social Agenda aims at modernising Europe's social model under the revamped Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs. It focuses on providing jobs and equal opportunities for all and ensuring that the benefits of the EU’s growth and jobs drive reach everyone in society. By modernising labour markets and social protection systems, it aims to help people seize the opportunities created by international competition, technological advances and changing population patterns, while protecting the most vulnerable in society.

The twin priorities of the Social Agenda are (i) employment and (ii) fighting poverty and promoting equal opportunities. These key priorities support two of the Commission's strategic goals for the next five years: prosperity and solidarity.

The employment objectives of the Social Agenda are to:

• create a European labour market, through enabling workers to take pension and social security entitlements with them when they work in different Member States and by establishing an optional framework for collective bargaining across frontiers; the Commission will also examine transition periods for workers from new Member States;
• get more people into better jobs, particularly through the European Youth Initiative and supporting women in (re-)entering the labour market;
• update labour law to address needs created by new forms of work, i.e. particular short-term contracts; a new health and safety strategy;
• manage the process of restructuring through the social dialogue.

The Agenda calls for partnerships between public authorities at local, regional and national level, employer and worker representatives and NGOs.

See also: Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers; Directorate-general for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities; open method of coordination; social competences; social objectives.