Mr. Paul Ginnell:

On behalf of the Better Europe Alliance, I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the joint committee on the Europe 2020 strategy. The members will have received the full submission, in which we address three key issues, the first being the need for a balanced economic, environmental and social approach within the Europe 2020 strategy. We believe the strategy provides a potential framework for a balanced economic, social and sustainable strategy for the European Union and its member states. However, in reality, this balance has not been maintained and the Stability and Growth Pact has dominated the European semester process and the Europe 2020 strategy. Macroeconomic policies have prioritised the reduction of national budget deficits through austerity which has damaged all three elements of the Europe 2020 strategy. Therefore, the mid-term review must result in equal priority being given to all three elements - the economic, environmental and social objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy - which must also be balanced within the wider European semester process. This requires a shift towards a more sustainable development model which would put the economy at the service of an inclusive and sustainable society, not the other way round. A practical way in which this could be done is by mainstreaming the Lisbon treaty social clause in terms of overall policy development, thereby operationalising Article 9, the social clause of the treaty. In practical terms, at EU and national level, this could be done through greater use of a poverty, equality and environmental impact assessment of economic and budgetary policy.

The second area on which we focus within our submission is the strengthening of the targets and their implementation. The targets and policy areas they represent are interdependent and part of what must be seen as an integrated strategy. For example, employment has increasingy become an insecure route out of poverty, with 9.1% of households in the European Union classified as the working poor in 2012, an increase from 8.4% in 2010. In Ireland over 16.5% of people at work experienced material deprivation in 2012, compared to 6.6% in 2008. Efforts to reach the numerical employment target, without complementary safeguards regarding the quality of jobs and employment, only further undermine the achievement of the poverty reduction target, while also threatening the sustainability of economic recovery in Ireland and the European Union.

The following are some specific priorities for the Better Europe Alliance under four of the five targets set in the Europe 2020 strategy. To ensure the employment target reflects gender equality in the labour market, the employment target should be broken down separately for men and women. This would support a greater gender focus in labour market policies, including addressing caring responsibilities and the gender pay gap. Supporting people to move from welfare to work and reducing unemployment will only be sustainable, effective and equitable if done in the balanced manner outlined in the European Union's active inclusion approach which highlights that, in order to support those excluded from the labour market, a balanced approach must be adopted involving the three aspects of access to adequate income, access to quality services and an inclusive labour market, including tacking issues of discrimination and decent work. This approach is wider and more positive than the narrow approach to activation being prioritised in Ireland and many EU countries which emphasises conditionality and penalties over empowering people and providing them with choices.

With regard to climate change and energy, the European Union is on track to exceed its 2020 target. This is the result of a successful energy transition in a number of important member states, combined with the recession and the ongoing placing offshore some of the high-emitting industries. However, the European Union is not willing to commit to a higher Europe 2020 strategy target, even to the level which it expects to meet. Bearing in mind that the EU 2020 strategy target for greenhouse gas emissions will be easily exceeded, the alliance calls on the European Union to live up to its claims to be a leader in combating climate change by raising the target for the Europe 2020 stragegy to 30% and adopting a target of 55% for 2030.

In regard to the education targets, they need to include sub-targets which could highlight the different participation and outcome levels for specific groups of young people. This could help to ensure more equitable educational outcomes for all children and social groups across the whole system. This can vary across the European Union but for Ireland it should include Traveller children, children with disabilities or special learning needs and children living in disadvantaged areas. Including sub-targets would result in a greater focus on policy development and implementation for these groups of children. The Better Europe Alliance believes the European Union should commit to an adult literacy target under the heading of education. This would strengthen and prioritise adult literacy responses on a European level and within EU member states, including Ireland.

With regard to the poverty and social exclusion target, there has been a complete failure to deliver on the poverty target or even to take it seriously. Instead of making progress towards the target of reducing the number of people experiencing poverty and social exclusion by 20 million by 2020, there has been an increase of over 9 million people. There have also been rapid increases in poverty levels in Ireland.

A clear reason for the failure to make progress towards reaching the poverty target has been the lack of an effective, fully integrated strategy to address the multidimensional nature of poverty. In Ireland and the European Union the main response to tackling poverty and social exclusion under the Europe 2020 strategy has largely been limited to measures to reduce unemployment and support access to the labour market. While access to decent work can help many people to exit poverty, it is clear that this must be balanced by a range of other measures. Furthermore, 58% of people at risk of poverty in Ireland are not connected to the labour market, for example, the retired, students, those with an illness or a disability and those with a caring role. Poverty and social exclusion are multidimensional, with complex causes which require a strategy to be put in place to address them in an holistic manner. It is essential, therefore, that a more integrated strategy to address poverty and social exclusion be co-ordinated at EU level and implemented at national level. Our submission contains a range of the areas that need to be addressed in such an integrated strategy.

On the specific question of how the poverty target can be strengthened, a number of issues need to be addressed. At EU level the main difficulty is the agreement that member states can adopt national targets which may have no relationship to the three EU indicators, namely, "at risk of poverty", material deprivation and low work intensity households. This allows countries to have selective targets, with, for example, the focus only on reducing unemployment in Germany, or a risk of "creaming" which involves the setting of targets which are easier to achieve. The European Commission has also calculated that if all EU member states were to achieve their national poverty reduction targets, there would still be an 8 million shortfall in meeting the target of 20 million people. Therefore, greater ambition on poverty reduction in member states should be demanded.

At member state level targets should reflect the multidimensional nature of poverty and social exclusion and its causes and also the fact that different groups experience poverty and exclusion in different ways. The national poverty targets should, therefore, as far as possible use the three EU indicators, allowing them to be monitored more consistently by all member states and to give the EU target more credibility. These indicators tell us something different about poverty and social exclusion; therefore, there should be a requirement for progress under each of the indicators, not just in an aggregate or combined manner. For example, in Ireland the poverty target is set with reference to consistent poverty only - a combination of material poverty and being "at risk of poverty". Sub-targets need to be set for vulnerable groups which experience higher levels of poverty and exclusion.

This will depend on national circumstances. In Ireland, the survey of income and living conditions highlighted that those who are not at work due to illness or disability, lone parents, children, people who are long-term unemployed and those in social rented housing currently have higher poverty rates than the general population.
The third area is improving governance and meaningful stakeholder engagement. There must be major improvement in the level and quality of stakeholder engagement in the Europe 2020 strategy and the wider European semester process, involving a greater level of debate and more meaningful consultation. This is central to the issue of EU-level governance. The development of EU-level guidelines on stakeholder engagement at national and EU level, as committed to in the European platform against poverty, would be an important step forward in this process. This engagement must be meaningful, with a clear link to outcomes and impact.