ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE : COUNTRY RECOMMENDATIONS DISAPPOINT SOCIAL ORGANISATIONS.

The country recommendations presented by the European Commission, on 7 June, in the context of the European semester are disappointing to organisations that defend social rights. The European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) regrets the Commission's lack of credibility while the European trade unions denounce its negative targeting of wages.

The country recommendations are meant to help the member states to strengthen their economic and social policies in order to achieve targets for growth, employment and public finances. They are based on the member states' national reform programmes and stability and convergence programmes. This step closing the first European semester has sparked disappointed reactions, however. For the EAPN, the Commission acknowledges that member states will have to do more to reach the agreed EU poverty reduction target, but it makes no credible recommendations about how to do so. "The Commission's recommendations fail to take the agreed EU poverty reduction target seriously," said EAPN Director Fintan Farrell, on 9 June. "Many member states did not respect the target and indicators they agreed at the European Council in June 2010 and the Commission lets this go by without comment," he added. Farrell sees this as a betrayal of the hopes of people experiencing poverty.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) commented that the...