THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

FIVE YEARS WITH THE PILLAR OF SOCIAL RIGHTS: EUROPE’S SOCIAL SITUATION IN TIMES OF CRISES 79 terventions at national and European level to support demand and extend social benefits in the pandemic and the energy crisis. In absolute terms, 95.3 million people are affected in 2022, which remains a high figure and is far from the perspective of a reduction of 15 million from 2019 levels to 77.2 million in 2030, as agreed at the Porto 2021 Social Summit. The high differences be- tween the EU member states remain persistent: while the Czech Republic (11.8 per cent), Slovenia (13.3 per cent) and Poland (15.9 per cent) have the lowest fig- ures in 2022, the south-eastern European countries of Romania (34.4 per cent), Bulgaria (32.2 per cent) and Greece (26.2 per cent) are at the top. Children in the EU are at greater risk of poverty or social exclusion, with a vulnerability rate of 24.7 per cent of all under-18s in 2022, up almost two percent- age points from before the pandemic. The vulnerability rate of young people aged 15-29 was also significantly higher than the general population, at 24.9 per cent in 2022. This is also true for people with disabilities, whose AROPE rate was 28.8 per cent in the EU in 2022. As expected, after the start of the Russian war of ag- gression on Ukraine, there was a significant increase in energy poverty among the EU population, as measured by the indicator of the percentage of the population that could not keep their homes sufficiently warm. After a low of 6.9 per cent in 2021, this rate was 9.3 per cent in 2022, with a much larger increase among those at risk of poverty or exclusion, from 16.4 per cent to 20.2 per cent in 2022. Differences between Member states are also high here: while among those already at risk of poverty or exclusion, more than half suffer from energy poverty in Cyprus, the figure is barely 4 per cent in Fin- land. Above-average increases of varying intensity oc- curred in 2022 for this population group in France (+8.8 percentage points), Portugal, Romania, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Latvia, Germany and Ireland (+4.1 percentage points). It remains to be seen whether this problem has further intensified in 2023 or could be limited by politi- cal measures to reduce energy costs. In the Social Scoreboard, which accompanies the EPSR, most of the indicators classified as ‘critical’ in the Member states point to the decline in disposable household income, the increase in the risk of poverty and exclusion among children, the sluggish reduction of poverty through social security systems, and a high rate of early school and training dropouts. This shows how the crises of the last few years have consolidated inequalities and pose challenges to welfare states. The EPSR: introducing a new tool in 2017 In 2016, the Commission presented a first draft of the EPSR before it was officially proclaimed by the three EU institutions – Parliament, Council and Commission – at a social summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 17 No- vember 2017. The document comprises three chapters: ‘Equal Opportunities and Labour Market Access’, ‘Fair Working Conditions’ and ‘Social Protection and Social Inclusion’. As it can be seen in Table 1 , it sets out a to- tal of 20 principles covering, among other things, social benefits, working conditions, educational opportunities, and inclusion policies. And it advocates or requires that adequate access, quality and/or coverage be provided. Despite the legal rights the EPSR proposes in the 20 principles, the Pillar is not legally binding EU law. It sum- marises parts of the social acquis of the Union (for exam- ple, on gender equality and anti-discrimination), but goes far beyond this by addressing areas that are the respon- sibility of the Member states (for example, on education, wage, or pension policy). Despite the unchanged distri- bution of competences, the EPSR has succeeded in creat- ing a new point of reference for the discursive debate on a Social Europe in the years since its proclamation. The Commission has played a significant role in this because it uses the Pillar in its regulatory initiatives as a reference in all conceivable social policy contexts. Parliament and the Council usually take up these references to the EPSR, so that its principles appear as a topic-specific context of justification in European legislation. This applies, for example, to secondary legislation projects such as the regulation on the establishment of a European Labour Authority, which the Council adopted in June 2019, the recommendation adopted by the Council in June 2021 to introduce a child guarantee to combat child poverty, or the directive on adequate minimum wages in the EU, which the Council adopted in October 2022. The ESSR also plays a role in distributive EU social policy. Here it has found its way into the programming