Verbatim report of proceedings

Monday, 18 October 2021 - Strasbourg

Employment and social policies of the euro area 2021 (debate)

  Tatjana Ždanoka, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, I would like to congratulate Lina Gálvez Muñoz for this very balanced report, highlighting the new challenges in the employment and social area.

The new reality we faced during the last year and a half brought a number of new employment arrangements. Home offices became part of everyday life for millions of people. It caused not only technical issues and very important income problems for many workers, but also negatively influenced the already unstable work—life balance. It also again challenged the gender equality issue and, of course, hit the most vulnerable.

Therefore, I very much appreciate the mainstreaming, equal opportunities and non—discrimination policies in the report. An important part of it is the correspondence with the anti-poverty strategy and the EU framework for national homelessness strategies with the target to end homelessness by 2030. The report also calls for effective work-life balance policies in order to further safeguard people’s private and family lives, which have now become an essential point since many important new reality challenges could not have been foreseen in the 2019 Work—Life Balance Directive that I was rapporteur for.

In general, we would certainly prefer to have a stronger text on the 2021 employment and social policies, but we hope tomorrow’s vote will make it as ambitious as possible.