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RECOMMENDATIONS
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4. European social pillar
– We need to approve measures at a European scale which provide ef-
fective minimum employment guarantees (contracts, salaries, legal
protection) and are designed to respond to new challenges, such as
automation and robotics.
– Social and employment rights, such as the universal right to collective
bargaining, must be included in basic European legislation.
– We need to create a European financial instrument to promote active,
counter-cyclical policies in the Member States most affected by the
crisis, to complement national budgets. All of these measures should
be designed to give real effect to the European Social Pillar, created at
the Gothenburg summit of November 2017.
5. A genuine European asylum system
– Creation of a common European policy for refugees, based on respect
for human rights and the right to asylum, given the urgent need to
respond to the current humanitarian crisis. Legislation to implement a
European migration and asylum policy must give priority to procedural
guarantees for migrants and refugees.
– It is essential to guarantee the opening up of safe legal routes that
guarantee refugees’ access to the right to asylum. This will require us:
• To strengthen resettlement programmes to reflect the number of
refugees, including fair distribution between all states.
• To guarantee the possibility of applying for asylum at embassies and
consulates in third countries.
• To activate policies to grant humanitarian visas, eliminate the re-
quirement for transit visas for people coming from conflict zones,
and make family reunification requirements more flexible.
– These measures, on their own, will not be sufficient and will not ad-
dress the true causes of forced movements of people. This requires a
structural change in focus of all EU policies, going beyond those that
pertain directly to migration.
6. Foreign policy, global governance and climate change policy
– In the current international situation, dominated by leaders such as
Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping, the response of the EU and its Member