Utrecht June 6th 2014
Research Partners Workshop
Service User and Workforce
Involvement: the European
Dimension
Stephen Bach
King’s College, London
Stephen.bach@kcl.ac.uk
With financial support
from the European Union
Presentation structure
• Phase 1 aims:
- perspectives social partners/NGOs on research themes
• Definitions/ambiguities civil society
• EU turn to civil society:
- implications and outcomes
• Sectoral social dialogue
• Relationship: social dialogue and citizens’ dialogue
Research Phase 1
• Interviews with EU stakeholders:
- social partners & civil society representatives
• Challenges/opportunities inclusion of service
users in institutions//practice SD
• Examine activities EU sectoral social dialogue
committees
Terminology
•
•
•
•
•
•
Customer
Consumer
Client
Service user
Citizen
Stakeholder
... Civil society
Term favoured in EU
discourse
e.g. European Citizens’
Initiative
-Citizens’ Dialogue
-Involvement civil society
Civil society - ambiguous
• Opposition to the state? Tea Party movement
• Complementing the state? The Big Society/3rd
sector etc
• Civil society organisations (working definition):
- established voluntarily by citizens
- organised around the promotion of an issue(s)
- autonomous from the state/supra-state
- organisations do not aim to maximise profits
EU: The Turn to Citizens
Aims
• Context since 1990s
• Widen stakeholder input into policy:
- EU democratic deficit & legitimacy deficit?
- ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ policy making
stakeholder inclusion
• Achieve ‘better’ policy outputs and practice:
- involvement of wider interests
- effective service delivery
Implications
• Transmission belt for
citizen concerns?
• Wider legitimacy & more
inclusive than SPs?
• Participative v.
Representative
democracy
• Aspiration: bring EU
closer to its citizens
White Paper on governance (2001)
• Diagnosis:
- Many people feel alienated from the Union’ s work (p.7)
- the goal is to open up policy-making and make it more inclusive
and accountable. A better use of powers should connect the EU
more actively to its citizens and lead to more effective policies (p.8)
- civil society plays an important role in giving voice to the concerns
of citizens and delivering services that meet people’s needs(p14).
• Prescription:
It is a chance to get citizens more actively involved in achieving the
Union’s objectives and to offer them a structured channel for
feedback, criticism and protest
• Concrete measures?
Treaty of Lisbon TFEU (2009)
• Art. 11.2 The institutions shall maintain an open, transparent and
regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society.
• European Citizens’ Initiative [ECI] (2012) (Article 11.4):
- invite Commission to issue legislative proposals
- policy initiation remains with the Commission
• Process
- Citizens’ Committee (7 member states)
- 1m signatures; minimum 7 member states; one year
• Results: Water is a human right (1.9m signatures)
- against liberalisation/privatisation
Responses and outcomes
• Civil society activated by the EC – access, resources
- variations between DGs in terms of engagement
• Civil Society Contact Group represents:
- ‘large rights and value based NGO sectors’
- 8 umbrella groups e.g. European Public Health Alliance
• Social platform (1995): 49 Social NGOs:
- campaign on employment, social justice
- include voices excluded by trade unions
- alliances with ETUC – Spring Alliance
- seek institutionalised civil dialogue
A contested contribution
European social dialogue
TFEU – Lisbon 2009
• Union as a whole to promote role of social partners at
EU level - Tripartite Social Summit (Art 152 TFEU)
- consultation of social partners by the Commission &
support for their dialogue (Art 154 TFEU)
- ‘contractual relations’ including agreements, can be
concluded by the social partners (Art155 TFEU)
• Sectoral social dialogue: 41 committees
- Hospitals and Healthcare (2007)
- Education (2010)
Sectoral Social dialogue: Challenges
• Variable involvement and results:
- between countries
- between social partners – employer engagement
- achieving effective outcomes/national follow-up
• Impact of the crisis:
- resources and participation
- sensitivity of austerity measures
- EU budget saving measures
Activities sectoral SD Committees
• Hospitals and Healthcare/Education:
- relatively new especially Education (2009/10)
- establishing the employers’ side e.g. EFEE
- employers often government ministries
- member state competence
- SD one of several priorities (e.g. HOSPEEM)
• Sectoral social dialogue and service user pressure:
- does not register directly as a priority in SD
- indirectly – role of parents/pupils
improving school governance/leadership
Social partner perspectives
• Employers:
- service user pressure or involvement
- degree of autonomy influences scope to involve users
• Trade unions:
- Ideology: Individualised conception of involvement:
consumer rights perspective
- collective orientation: services of general interest
- Legitimacy: representative v. participatory democracy:
independence
- resources made available to civil society organisations
- SPs are integral to civil society
Discussion
• Increased role for civil society in EU policy making
• Relationship social dialogue (SD) to civil dialogue(CD):
- academically/policy terms separate spheres
- CD: primary concern EU governance
- SD: primary concern worker voice/social Europe
• Response of social partners to CSO:
- Substitute?
- Complement? - alliances on specific issues?
- Ignore?
• Connection EU level to national/workplace level:
- same debates and issues ?