1st Advisory Group Meeting of the Initiative for Social Cohesion, September 2004

Following the conclusions of the 8th Regional Meeting of the ISC, held Paris in May this year, the 1st Advisory Group meeting of the Social Cohesion Initiative (ISC) was held under the chairmanship of Mrs. Miet Smet, Co-chair of the ISC, Member of the Flemish Parliament and former Belgian Minister of Labour and Employment. All the five ISC sectors were represented.

The main items of the agenda focused on establishing the mandate of the Advisory Group (AG), planning future activities, discussing contents and organizational matters for upcoming events, such as the WT II/Regional Meetings (18-19 November, 2004) and the 9th ISC Regional Meeting and identifying ways to enhance inter-sectoral and cross table activities. Some discussions also highlighted the importance of establishing a monitoring and an evaluation reporting mechanism. The discussions retained a character of informality in line with the AG advisory and co-ordination functions.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND TOUR D’HORIZON

In her introduction Mrs. Smet welcomed the participants and called for an operations- oriented discussion. She informed on her new position as a member of the Flemish Parliament, presented the apologies of Mrs. Jela Bacovic who was unable to attend. MS also announced JB’s new position within the Council of Ministers Serbia and Montenegro, as Director of Serbia and Montenegro European Integration Office. MS referred to the need to pay a visit to the newly appointed Commissioners relevant to the ISC activities within the Barroso Commission, particularly Mr. Vladimir Spidla, Commissioner for DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunity.

The partners working in the health sector stressed that there was also a need to visit the Commissioner responsible for Health and Consumers Protection, Mr. Markos Kyprianou.

A “tour de table” followed, whereby most of the partners re-affirmed the positive results of the ISC work, which has contributed to placing more firmly social policy issues on the political agenda of governments, to strengthening key actors in the region, who are now willing and able to work more independently and to co-operate at the regional level, and to mobilising funds for concrete regional projects in crucial fields.

Bernard Snoy, the Director of WTII, reiterated the need for the Initiative to enhance its visibility, to demonstrate the added value of regional co-operation and to strengthen cross-fertilisation among its five sectors, including on how to mobilise additional funds. BS stressed the importance for the ISC to be result oriented and policy minded.

The ETUC representatives spoke about the difficulty encountered in the attempts to establish and develop the Trade Unions in a context where social partners were often changing in accordance to the newly elected governments. They nevertheless highlighted the positive results achieved through the establishment of a functional legal network and the launching of a project for the establishment of labour courts with the full participation of the tripartite structure in Bulgaria. Discussions amongst the parties were ongoing for the project to be replicated in Macedonia. They called for a political intervention by the ISC Co-chairmanship and the Stability Pact management with the Macedonian government in order to re-affirm the importance of this exercise. Reference was made to a newly designed pilot project to enhance general co-operation between trade unions from Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. Since the war in Kosovo there had been only very rare contacts amongst the social partners in this geographical area; therefore the re-establishment of a dialogue would be a breakthrough.

The WHO provided a positive report on the activities in the health sector: the health network had achieved a vital co-operation in the region both at the political and technical levels and induced an important change in disbursement procedures with each country being fully responsible for managing the funds allocated to its part of the regional projects. Moreover two additional regional projects were about to be launched, namely on Blood Safety and Emergency Services, while negotiations were underway with potential donors such as Norway and Canada for a potential third project on Tobacco Control.

Speaking for the CEB, Michèle Meunier noted that social policy development was increasingly recognised as a key item of the policy agenda by international organisations. She gave as an example the Guadalajara declaration issued on the occasion of the recent EU-Latin America Summit. This meant that the ISC should no longer be concerned with its own recognition as the complementarity between economic and social development is now broadly recognized.

The experience of the CEB involvement in the Health and Housing sectors was overall positive. Beside an already important loan portfolio in the housing sector, MM referred to an upcoming pilot project in BiH of 8 MEURO on Social Housing. The CEB is also preparing a study of the trends in housing reforms in SEE. In the health sector the CEB, after having provided funds for the restructuring of a School on Public Health, would finance the attendance to a training session for 17 public health specialists (2 from each country of the Region). MM announced that preparation work was ongoing for the conference on “Macro-economic Policy and Health” and that a publication on this subject was expected prior to the event. In addition the CEB would co-finance the 2nd Ministerial Health Conference, to which it was envisaged to invite also Ministers of Finance, although no final decision had been taken.

The CoE informed that the co-financed CoE/EC project on establishing a Centre for Social Policy Co-ordination in Skopje was signed and that the ISC would from now on be fully involved and expected to make contributions (e.g. in identifying candidates) . The CoE also announced the generous pledge of the Belgian government for the Employment sector, which will co-finance the second ministerial conference on employment planned for July 2005, as well as the meetings of the Permanent High Level Committee on Employment.

The ILO representatives informed that there are three major projects ongoing in the Stability Pact countries. The one related to social protection has three overlapping phases: research component, policy seminars, technical training. Social expenditure reviews are to be completed for all the SP beneficiary countries by the end of this year. A new project was started in Serbia and Montenegro on reforms of the labour inspectorates which is funded by USDOL. The third important project is aiming to support the Stability Pact countries in revising their employment policies together with the CoE. First Croatia and Albania are preparing the Country Reviews of Employment Policies (CREPs), to be followed by national tripartite seminar. There will be a conference on CREPs in December in Sarajevo. The ILO supported ETUC’s assertion that the establishment of labour courts would further improve the social dialogue in SEE.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING

Advisory Group Mandate

With regard to the scope and mandate of the Advisory Group, the steering and co-ordination role of the Group was confirmed. It would contribute to the identification of sectoral priorities and to the mobilization of financial and technical assistance; it would ensure the representation of the SP Management and ISC at important events and ensure a constant flow of information. It would contribute to the preparation of key ISC documents, such as progress reports and action plans. Emphasis was put on the political role of the AG which would provide recommendations to the ISC Co-Chairs the WT II and SP management for political interventions. The AG would meet on a bi-annual basis and or on an ad-hoc basis. A significant representation of the SEE countries in the AG was desirable; if needed this could be made possible by drawing financing from the sub-sectors budgets.

Updated Calendar of Events

The calendar of the planned events relevant to the ISC was thoroughly reviewed. The participation of the Co-chair of the ISC was secured for upcoming important meetings in the Health, Housing and Social Partners sectors. MS also indicated her willingness to visit more systematically the countries of the Region to meet with political leaders.

Next Stability Pact Working Table and Regional Table Meetings

To facilitate the sharing of experience between the sectors and to prepare reports for the forthcoming WT II and Regional Meetings in Skopje on 18-19 November, the representatives of the five sectors were asked to ensure that timely and relevant information be transmitted to the ISC Secretariat within the next two weeks. A format for the presentation of this information was presented by the Secretariat. As concerned 2004, it entailed, next to the already defined objectives and achievables for 2004, a column on the results achieved or expected to be achieved by the end of the year; for 2005, it was proposed to reduce the table to four columns, spelling out objectives (which might be identical to those for 2004), achievables as well as political processes or interventions and events related to these achievables. Mary O’ Mahony informed that the meeting of Working Table II would again discuss two topics relevant for its initiatives, along the lines of the “Entrepreneurship and Employability” topic discussed at the Portoroz meetings. While the topics for Skopje have yet to be finalised, employment is likely to be used as a good umbrella for several WT II initiatives. The ISC should determine how best to highlight its work in a variety of sectors under this theme, e.g. the role of trade unions within the reform process and/or the delivery of social housing in the SEE countries. It would be important for the sectors to identify angles and perspectives from which the work of the ISC could be tackled. In the context of the efforts to enhance the convergence of Working Table II initiatives MS noted the need for the other WT II Initiatives, such as Trade, Investment Compact, Infrastructure and Energy to highlight the impact of their activities on the employment situation in SEE. All participants agreed that the development of the social sector was highly dependent and inter-related to positive development in economic areas such as trade, investment and infrastructure. Also the difficulty of measuring results was in no way limited to the sectors covered by the ISC. The possibility to organize a sort of “market place” on the occasion of the WT II and Regional meetings to display snap shot presentations of the ISC activities and achievements was considered. ISC partners not officially attending the meetings could be invited under the heading of “Friends of the Chair”.

Next ISC Regional Meeting

Although the Austrian government has pledged to finance the ISC Regional meeting to be held by the end of 2005 in conjunction with the Austrian EU Presidency (first half of 2006), the importance of organising an ISC meeting earlier on, ideally in January 2005, was discussed. The main problem remained the financing of the SEE representatives’ participation. One avenue to be pursued would be to seek funding from the Czech Republic or Slovenia. The ISC co-chairmanship and SP management will activate some contacts to this end. Another proposal was to organise this meeting in conjunction with the Meeting of the Employment sector co-organised by the CoE and the ILO in Sarajevo in December 2004. The leaders of this sector, asked to become the financial sponsors of the SEE representatives in this event, will report on the feasibility of such a request.

With regards to the provisional agenda of the ISC Regional meeting, it was decided that progress and plans would be reviewed, but also the CEB would brief the ISG Regional meeting on its work on the “Social Portrait” of the SEE countries, which was presently in preparation. This would allow for a topical discussion on the current social situation in SEE, thus making the links among the five ISC sectors more visible and operational.

ISC Monitoring Instruments

The draft monitoring report mechanism was presented and discussed. There was full agreement on the need to have a reporting mechanism that provides a comprehensive overview of the activities in all sectors of the ISC. The need to have a mechanism for evaluating the impact of the activities was also discussed and deemed important. Several of the sectors reported that they have evaluation procedures in place both for specific projects and overall policy development.
It was decided that as a first step, the ISC Secretariat would co-ordinate the preparation of a Monitoring Report covering all five sectors. The reporting responsibility for the individual sectors should lie with national players and sector leaders. The ISC Secretariat would compile this and arrange for initial circulation. Regarding evaluation, it was noted that identifying and agreeing the relevant parameters of indicators to properly evaluate the results achieved in the ISC framework would be a substantial and time-consuming task. It was agreed that the various sectors would forward their current evaluation criteria (and where available results) and the ISC Secretariat would prepare a summary overview. The next Advisory Group meeting should discuss how to proceed to determine what indicators would be used for overall ISC evaluation. Paul Peter, the Swiss delegate, offered some expertise to support the identification and setting of indicators. MS noted that ISC beneficiaries should not be characterized as only the vulnerable populations but in fact all categories of the society.

Academic Networking in the field of Social Policy Development in SEE

At the request of the ISC partners, at the 8th ISC Regional meeting, a draft concept paper finalised by the ISC Secretariat was presented and discussed. Most of the participants welcomed the establishment of such a network although some, such as MS and the Swiss delegate, were concerned about the real added value of this exercise. Following an interesting discussion highlighting pros and cons of the network, the prevailing opinion was that, provided that this exercise does not overstretch the available human and financial resources, the ISC Secretariat should proceed with the preparatory phase proposed in the paper and provide an overview of available networks so as to contribute to better co-ordination. All the ISC partners at the meeting indicated that indeed they had an academic network and would provide details. The co-ordination of the academic networks would mainly enhance beneficial links between the SEE, the EU and international fora, it would also provide informal and fast exchange of information and create a pool of experts for various operational tasks. The need to identify partners in the SEE countries was particularly emphasised. The next meeting of the AG would decide about further steps.

CONCLUSIONS

Annexes:

1. Agenda
2. List of Participants
3. Calendar of Events
4. Sector tables
5. Concept paper on Academic Network
6. ToRs for the Advisory Group