A commitment was made by the Council to ‘feeding in and feeding out’ between the processes and reporting mechanisms for the reformed Lisbon agenda and the streamlined Open Method of Coordination of Social Protection and Social Inclusion and its national processes.
This report is the EAPN assessment of how the new Lisbon process is integrating social inclusion priorities and promoting the active participation of social Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and people experiencing poverty. It forms part of EAPN’s contribution to the Spring European Council.
Following an outline of the role of social inclusion in the Lisbon Strategy the report presents the responses from 15 national EAPN networks to the social inclusion and employment content of their National Reform Programmes. These responses were based on a questionnaire, completed by members of the EAPN Social Inclusion Review Group, Employment Task Force and Executive Committee members, each analysing the National Reform Programmes in their own Member States.
The third section presents EAPN’s response to the Commission’s Annual Progress Report: ‘Time to move up a gear’ (CEC, 2006, January 25): the European Commission assessment of the first year of the revised Lisbon Strategy. EAPN comments on whether the key priorities identified in that report can promote synergy between social inclusion and social protection and growth and jobs, and make progress towards the eradication of poverty. The final section sets out a roadmap to a better implementation of the Lisbon Strategy in 5 key steps.
The title of this report, A Future Worth Having, summarises the EAPN response to the Annual Progress Report. It complements the analysis made in EAPN’s Back to the future report (Duffy and Jeliazkova 2005) which assessed progress in the National Action Plans on Social Inclusion.
It has four parts:
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Part 1: Social inclusion in the Lisbon strategy
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Part 2: The EAPN networks’ assessment of their Member States’ National Reform Programmes
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Part 3: Time to move up a gear: Can the key priorities take Europe to a future worth having?
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Part 4: Recommendations: Five steps: a roadmap to a better implementation of the Lisbon Strategy
