In the midst of a deteriorating social situation, the informal summit organised by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy comes just at the right time. Three dossiers should, in fact, be the subject of discussions on 11 February: the economic strategy for the coming ten years (which will succeed the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Employment) and the mechanisms for exiting the crisis; the climate change problem; and the Haiti disaster. With regard to the first topic, Van Rompuy had made known, just a few days after his nomination and in view of this summit, that the EU “needed further economic growth in order to finance, on a solid basis, the social model and preserve the European way of life”.

Figures relating to the employment situation in Europe, published at the end of January by Eurostat, bear witness to the seriousness of the situation: in December 2009, the eurozone unemployment rate was at its highest level for more than a decade. In December 2009, 23.012 million men and women were unemployed in the EU27, of whom 15.763 million were in the eurozone.

Aware of this reality, the European social partners and the three countries presiding over the EU during the next 18 months (Spain, Belgium and Hungary) had reasserted, during the Employment and Social Affairs Council of 28 and 29 January, their desire for the Union to remain socially engaged. On the same day, Belgian trade unions marched through the streets of Brussels, calling for a European recovery plan for employment. According to their calculations, the taxation of financial transactions would make it possible to free up important resources for the recovery. On the occasion of the Council, the Spanish Presidency of the EU had firmly defended maintaining national support measures for the economy as long as unemployment continues to rise, while the European Commission, in a recent report, had considered that the eligibility criteria for the crisis measures should be much tougher than in 2009.

Besides employment, social Europe must also face other challenges. During his hearing with MEPs, László Andor, commissioner-designate for employment, social affairs and inclusion, identified the ageing population and modernisation of the Structural Funds with a view to more flexible management. Questioned on youth unemployment and poverty, he had displayed his desire to work on training. Furthermore, the revision of the Working Time Directive, centred on problems in calculating on-call times in the health sector, will be another important subject to tackle in the coming months. The latest attempt to revise this directive had, in fact, failed in spring 2009. And, while provisional versions were circulating last year in preparation for a revision of the directive, the Commission has not officially presented anything to date.