The meeting brought together CESI, Social Platform and Eurodiaconia and a number of affiliates with experts and political representatives of the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the European Policy Centre (EPC) to exchange with decision-makers from several cabinets and Directorate-Generals (DGs) of the European Commission involved in the European Semester and the EU’s macroeconomic governance and fiscal coordination framework.

The specific objective was to establish:
• how more public social investments can be promoted in the European Semesters upcoming 2018 Annual Growth Survey (AGS), Country reports and Country-specific recommendations (CSRs), especially in fields such as early childhood education and care, education and training, health and social housing; and
• how the EU can develop a common framework (methodology) to measure economic returns of social investments – as a precondition to establish which social expenditure is future-oriented investment and could receive special consideration in the frame of the EU’s economic governance and budgetary surveillance rules.

According to CESI, Eurodiaconia and Social Platform, both is essential to counter growing social divergences in Europe.

The meeting followed a previous edition which took place in January and which saw the launch of a joint initiative by CESI, Social Platform and Eurodiaconia to nourish and structure emerging debates about a feasible and effective roadmap towards more public investments to counter social divergences in Europe.

For further information:
Hendrik Meerkamp
Policy Adviser
[email protected]
0032-(0)2 282 1860