2.1 Birth of the Pillar

Following months of mobilisation from our ministers within the EPSCO Council, our MEPs in the European Parliament, our governments, our member parties and a strong personal commitment from Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, the joint proclamation by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on the European Pillar of Social Rights2 on 17 November 2017 marked an important step forward for the PES’s vision of a social Europe.

The path to this proclamation was steep. While conservative leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Angela Merkel and others strongly opposed the Pillar in the first place, our family united behind it. The European Parliament, and especially the S&D Group and its Rapporteur on the European Pillar of Social Rights, Maria João Rodrigues, played a crucial role in overcoming this resistance, notably by building a very large majority involving five political groups to support the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and demanding a binding commitment to the principles it outlines. We won this battle collectively and the Pillar was eventually endorsed by all EU prime ministers.

The EU thus equipped itself with a set of 20 solid principles, to guide its policies in the years to come. It made the Social Summit in Gothenburg a great success for our political family. More importantly, it put social issues back on the EU’s negotiation table. After decades of limited social ambitions, with the notable exception of the Youth Guarantee, the EU finally set itself new objectives. The Pillar of Social Rights is therefore an important victory and it shall be our social compass to ensure that the future transitions are socially fair and just.