An EU social agenda for a geopolitical age

Five years after the Porto Social Summit and the adoption of the Action Plan for the European Pillar of Social Rights, the European Union is facing geopolitical challenges. Europe has been challenged by the new US leadership, while the centre-right leadership of EU institutions takes the US model as an inspiration for its economic and social agenda. Competitiveness became a horizontal priority, feeding on a selective reading of the Draghi Report. 

With a fifth of the EU population at risk of poverty or exclusion, including millions of children, precarious working conditions developing in the aftermath of digitalisation and the green transition and economic austerity measures across Member States, we argue for a revival of the spirit of Porto. This would not only entail conventional tools of EU social policy, but a new European Economic Socialisation Agenda as well.

In this context, FEPS hosted an expert roundtable on Friday, 30 January 2025, on how the EU can revive its social model in turbulent times based on a presentation of the upcoming policy brief on “European sovereignty and the social dimension”, co-authored by László Andor (FEPS) and Robin Huguenot-Noël (Freie Universität Berlin). By discussing the diagnosis, identified priorities, and policy proposals of an advanced draft, the event fed into the finalisation of the publication.

This expert meeting was by invitation only. For more information regarding this event, please contact François Balate, FEPS Policy Analyst (francois.balate@feps-europe.eu) and Vanessa Zwisele, FEPS Project Officer (vanessa.zwisele@feps-europe.eu).