Press conference - Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council

06:35 - 08:21

Speaker 5

Good afternoon everybody. Today I'm very pleased to report that the Council has adopted the recommendation on fighting housing exclusion, including homelessness. And this is a significant achievement of the Irish presidency and a strong expression of our shared determination to address homelessness and housing exclusion across Europe. Securing agreement on this recommendation was a key priority of the Irish presidency, and I would like to thank my ministerial colleagues and the European Commission for their constructive engagement throughout the negotiations. As the first EU recommendation in this area, it provides a common framework to support member states in strengthening their responses.

The recommendation promotes prevention, early intervention, integrated support services, and access to adequate, affordable, and secure housing. It recognizes that addressing homelessness requires coordinated action across housing, health, employment, and social protection policies, while respecting national circumstances and competencies.

Implementation will now be key, and Ireland's approach already aligns closely with many of the recommendation's priorities, particularly prevention, early intervention, and sustainable housing solutions. Through the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness, we will continue to work with and learn from other member states as we pursue the shared ambition of ending homelessness. We also look forward to the incoming presidency continuing this important work. Our presidency has been guided by the Irish seanfhocal Ní neart go cur le chéile, and there is no strength without unity. Today, Europe has acted together to take an important step towards a fairer future for all.

08:21 - 08:25

Speaker 6

Thank you.

08:25 - 14:32

Roxana Mînzatu

Directly me. Yes. Thank you to all colleagues in the Irish presidency. Thank you, Minister Cleary, Minister Foley, Minister Browne, to all your colleagues for the efficiency, I've said this, but also on the way that you've set the agenda for our social Europe today in such complex times that we are crossing. Today, the discussions were in a way very well connected, speaking first about a roof over people's head.

The first recommendation, Council recommendation on fighting housing exclusion and homelessness, is about that, and it is a lot about prevention and acting early. But it is a political signal that is very important, launched with our first anti-poverty strategy.

Then after this topic, we've discussed about of course access to employment, to job as a dignified way out of poverty. This was indeed a topic of our lunch debate with the Member States. Should there be a European response, what kind of European response in terms of supporting those that are very far away from the labour market, those that are not looking for a job, those that we do not capture in the statistics about unemployment, be them women that care for their children or their elderly, be them persons with disabilities that might could work but do not have the proper support, or people with different backgrounds who suffer socio-economic discrimination and need personalised support. And then the third question is, okay, we have discussions about homes and about housing, about access to jobs, but we see this more and more, no matter what is the socio-economic category of people that we discuss with, people want quality employment. People want fair pay.

People want healthy, good working conditions.

And these elements are reflected in our debate about the Quality Jobs Act, to which we are towards which we are working with an aim to present an initiative by the end by the end of this year. It is important to to share with you what I've shared to to ministers alike in our meeting. First of all, all these three initiatives are very well connected to our agenda for competitiveness. We cannot think about a competitive Europe if we do not acknowledge the fact that quality jobs, employment, proper housing conditions are part of the recipe of European competitiveness. We cannot hope to have a stronger single market, and we all want a stronger single market, if we do not properly look at the dimension of the free movement of workers, the mobility side of workers and at the at the other side of the mobility, the right to stay.

A strong single market is not only about the right to find employment, quality, dignified employment, employment that maintains your social rights wherever you choose or go to work in Europe. It is also about having the same quality employment, access to to a decent job in the region, in the community where you are born or where you choose to reside.

And so all of these dimensions are reflected in our debates today. Of course, ministers have all expressed some elements to which I want to say I adhere fully, that everything that we should propose in terms of activating some of the people in this 50 million category of Europeans that are outside the labor market should prove adequate European value. So any initiative that the Commission would would would propose in terms of activating those that are very far away from the labor market or in terms of supporting the quality of jobs in Europe should prove clear European added value, should have in consideration the very specificities of national labor markets, of economies, of public of social service and public service systems. That it should be very well targeted, that we should look to have a thorough impact assessment. All of these things are very much present into the way that we design our our our initiatives.

Of course, the Quality Jobs Act is a more advanced initiative. It's almost two years now that we've been working on it, two rounds of consultations according to the treaties with our European social partners, with the trade unions and employers, going through the evidence gathering. And so we're looking into a very calibrated approach, but we need to look into how we are able to support people as they work more with technology, but at the same time this technology needs to maintain the human-centricity of the of the of the worker in the workplace.

Or with climate change, more heat, more weather-related events, how do we make sure that these risks are assessed and mitigated? Just to give you a few examples. Or that we have precarious working conditions in certain sectors with high mobility, such as transport or construction or agriculture or cleaning, where we also have shortages of people. But shortages means not only that we look for any type of of available worker, but also we offer to these workers the quality employment that they that they deserve. So overall, I think these three topics were connected.

The inputs that we're receiving from member states are very important to the work of the Commission. And I think that the fact that we had them now is extremely, extremely useful because both for the activation potential activation initiative, we are very early on. We just finished the first round of consultation. For the Quality Jobs Act, we're towards the end of the process and we can take the views of the member states into consideration as we propose the final shape of the of the Quality Jobs Act. So really appreciating the efforts of the Irish presidency to bring these three important topics into their agenda, give them time, give them space so that we can use that into how we build a stronger social Europe in the end by the choices that we make, including in policymaking.

14:32 - 15:31

Speaker 8

So thank you to all of you.

15:31 - 15:41

No.

15:41 - 16:12

Speaker 2

Perfect. Thank you very much and thank you for bearing with us. And thank you, Executive Vice-President and Ministers, for your statements. We'll now open up the floor to questions both here in the room and online.

If you'd like to ask a question online, please raise your hand, likewise here in the room. So I have Solène here first. Solène, we'll give you the mic.

16:12 - 16:34

Solène Poulic

Thanks. I ask my question in French if possible. Two questions actually. Solène Poulic, Agence Europe. La première question, c'est sur le Quality Job Act.

16:34 - 17:50

Speaker 9

Donc c'est peut-être plutôt pour la vice-présidente. Est-ce que maintenant on a une idée claire de la forme de l'outil ? Est-ce que ce sera une directive avec des chapitres spécifiques ? Toujours sur le Job Quality Act, j'aimerais comprendre comment concrètement on peut intégrer les facteurs climatiques et le stress au travail au-delà, voilà, d'intégrer dans les plans de prévention, dire qu'il faut qu'il faut tenir compte de ça.

Quel genre de nouvelles mesures concrètes on peut proposer ? Et sur l'activation, le déjeuner de ce midi, est-ce qu'il y a une majorité pour un outil législatif et est-ce que ça sera plutôt ou plutôt une recommandation ? Voilà, j'aimerais bien comprendre vers quel type d'instrument on va et si c'est effectivement une demande forte des pays membres pour avoir ce genre d'outil européen, de nouvel outil européen. Merci, au revoir. Enfin merci, pardon.

17:50 - 23:59

Roxana Mînzatu

Oui, merci. Je vais répondre en anglais de toute façon. Thank you for the questions. On the Quality Jobs Act, I still wouldn't be able to tell you today what I will say on the 3rd of December, potentially when I hope that we will adopt the Quality Jobs Act and I will have a press conference.

I cannot preempt, not least because we finished indeed the second phase consultation, but still we have our regulatory scrutiny board inside the college and a lot of discussions inside the Commission where, of course, we will as a college decide and so I cannot go now towards a very final version of the document. The intentions with which I work, the intentions that I put on the table are, yes, one document, which would in terms of the legal part of the initiative, so not a package like the fair labor mobility, but rather a single document with chapters. Also because we are looking at an output that we would wish to be very targeted and agile as well, so not comprehensive. It won't be an encyclopedia because we already have so much legislation on health and safety, for example, because you have asked. We want, you know, to be able to assess first of all the risks in terms of weather-related or psychosocial risk.

So these assessments are not unimportant. They are important parts of the health and safety action in the workplaces. First assessing the risks and then of course having a plan to respond, including these types of risks in line with any type of health risks is already such an important step. So we're looking at such elements, but we're not obviously going to come with a whole new philosophy of health and safety because we already have a lot of health and safety European acquis.

We are just very targeted, like a surgeon coming to do what is needed, but in a way that is gap-oriented, so covering what has not been covered by existing legislation and with a, should I say, approach that is as simple by design as possible. Likewise, we are looking at other chapters where still there's ongoing debate and I will not be able now to give you any breaking news: algorithmic management and subcontracting. I have many times announced the ideas that we have with these chapters, again very targeted, not to create overlap and burden. It was said also today in the debate with the ministers: nobody wants to repeat what is already in the AI Act or GDPR, that is absolutely out of the question. We need to see in terms of very labor workplace-related situations whether the idea of human in control, transparency, combating of discrimination holds in a context where you have teams of human workers that are managed by AI agents.

And manage means many elements in the process: hiring, firing, assessing, rewarding, sanctioning, gathering data, impact on intensity of work.

But all this we assess because again, we have some elements already but not work-related work-related situations. There were member states that said, you know, it's it's very correct that workers need to know how they can appeal the decision taken by an algorithm if they don't agree with it because with a human you know what to do and what are the procedures and what are your rights, but if it's an algorithm, what what do we know, what is the transparency of it and what are the the recourses that a human worker would have. So all these are topics that we address, how exactly it's still a work ongoing, so I cannot go bring time further to us, allow us for a bit more weeks to to really be able to finalize the Quality Jobs Act. On the activation, lunch one more is early, one more idea on my side, it's early still, so think we have announced our intention to to propose a European response towards the need of of activating people that are outside of the labor market and are exposed to poverty and social exclusion. We've announced it on the 6th of May, in July, on the 22nd of July, we have started the first phase consultation, it has finished on the 15th of October, so quite recently.

We are looking at what the social partners have responded. Now we've had this interesting debate with member states. It's quite exploratory. I wouldn't say there was a strong call for legal action in that sense. On the contrary, member states, most of them said, yes, we need to do better and more in terms of offering people a way out of poverty through quality employment, but please be mindful of the competencies and of our own national complexities.

We are, because why I say this, activating is not, an initiative on activating people outside the labor market is not a very, how should I say, simplistic response. It would entail a number of elements, how to say, to be able to have an integrated approach in the sense of one way you support a person with disability that might be able to work and needs skills, adaptation of the workplace, certain public services working together in a more case-oriented. It's another story in the case of women that need childcare facilities or long-term care facilities available so that they can have good jobs and return to their careers. So it's going to still be some work to do in the activation direction, but we have, I would say, put on the table one big reality, that getting out of poverty is not always a question of benefits or subsidies, it is a question of quality employment and that we should be able to do that in a more effective manner in the entire of European Union. I hope you don't leave because I was too long in my response.

23:59 - 24:08

Speaker 11

Lithuania has sent a message. But I have been too long, so sorry. Yeah.

24:08 - 24:26

Speaker 2

Thank you very much, Executive Vice-President. Well, if there are no further questions in the room and neither online, we might leave it there for today. Many thanks to the ministers and to the Executive Vice-President and for everyone for joining us here. We will see you in December. Bye-bye.