A very artificial social package
(B2) By bringing together in a large package, on July 2, a set of totally heterogeneous provisions, ranging from discrimination against Roma to European works councils, including reimbursement of care for cross-border patients and a note on the quality of social spending, the Barroso Commission thought it was a coup! Mark that she was doing "Social" as much as Economics or the Environment. It missed! Failure in terms of policy and in terms of communication.
The package lacks technical and political consistency: there is no link between the different provisions, worse they clash. Neo-liberal point of view, for the "cross-border care" directive (prepared by DG Sanco) which aims to liberalize the market and falls within the watermark of the 1st draft Bolkestein directive; or the "social expenditure" note (prepared by DG Ecfin) which reflects the point of view of limiting social expenditure. the communication on the Globalization Fund (prepared by DG Employment). As for the renewed Social Agenda, it is singularly lacking in ambition in relation to the issues. And the communication on social services of general interest is, on the whole, a copy paste from the previous communication.
In terms of communication, the impression of "draft", of "anything", of "big sweep before inventory" predominates. And indeed, we can ask ourselves a few questions: the works council directive has been waiting to be revised since 2004, as regards the question of cross-border healthcare, if the problems are as they are described, we can wonder why the Commission has not brought infringement proceedings against the Member States concerned. Some reports that were slipped into this package wouldn't even have resulted in a press release in general. In short, a nice mess...
NB: Prudently, DG Competition has artificially temporized. The general exemption regulation (employment aid, training, research...) which was to pass on July 2 and should logically have been included in this "social" package, has been postponed for a few days, it will be adopted, by written procedure on 7 July.
