Central topics discussed during the meeting were EU funding measures as well as ways to achieve a more social Europe that manages to make the idea of European integration more appealing to the citizens again. In this context, Mr Wolff and Mr Heeger spoke up, most notably, in favour of initiatives for a more socially acceptable mobility of workers in the EU and raised ideas on how to fight youth unemployment while at the same time providing new impetuses for an economically competitive Union.

During the meeting, they also voiced concerns about the exclusion of CESI from the European Commission’s recent high-level conference on ‘A new start for social dialogue’, stressing on this occasion that CESI – representing more than 5 million members from 41 national associations in 33 European countries – would clearly welcome if it was, generally, considered and included more systematically in European decision-making procedures.