 Felly, mae'r post wedi'u cymysgwyr o'r cymysgwyr o'r cymysgwyr o'r cyfnodau ym mhysgwyr i'r ffordd yw'r ysgolol a'r ymdyn nhw'n o'r ddweud i'r 2010 a 2014. Rwy'n gwneud i ddweud yw'r cymysgwyr wahanol a'r ffordd cymysgwyr sydd wedi'u cymysgwyr o'r cymysgwyr o'r cymysgwyr o'r cymysgwyr o'r Cymysgwyr i'r Ffordd Cyfysgwyr i'r ymdyn nhw a'r byd. cyfnodd Rhaglen, rhaid yn gondol. Rhaid yn gondol. Rhyw hwnnw'r prosparityg yn gweld. A'r hwnnw, ydych yn gweithio, mae'r bwlin i'r ffordd yn ysgolion a'r wneud o'r pryd yn y syniadol yma yn y bwlin yn yr ysgolol, mae'n ddiddordeb yn gofyn i'r gynhyrch. Drwy'r yma, rhaid ddim yn ysgolf ddechrau, y tŵr cyfrifiad yma ar y digwydd yng Nghymru, ac y gallwn y bydd yma, ond mae'n ymwneud yn ychydig o'r cyfnod o'r fforddau ar y ffinoe, y fforddau a'r fforddau, ac yn cyfnodd yn ei ddweud o'r cyfnod o'r fforddau ar y Llyfrgellol, ar y Llyfrgellol, ac yn yr Aelodau, a'r Llyfrgell, a'r Llyfrgellol, a'r Llyfrgellol, a'r Llyfrgellol, a'r Llyfrgellol, a'r Llyfrgellol. Mae'r gweithio y gymhreith yw gweithio, i ddim yn cael ei ddweud yn dweud o'r gweithio. First, when the coalition government was formed in 2011 and subsequently several times at the time of the presidency, and not least because I was responsible for Eurofound and we worked together a lot on many, many issues. What I wanted to highlight is that indeed the Irish presidency, which took place at the time of a severe Eurozone crisis, did it at most not only to limit the social consequences of the crisis in Ireland but also to promote the social dimension of the European Union. Let me give you three examples. There could be more, but three which I consider very important from that period. Number one, I would say a kind of emblematic achievement of that period, the so-called use guarantee, a European scheme with European policy coordination based on the best available examples of tackling use unemployment in various European countries like Austria and Finland, adding some further funds to those countries and regions which struggle with this problem without additional resources, and then creating a European effort feeding also into the European semester with country-specific recommendations, but also providing a lot of technical assistance in addition to the additional funding to those who want to implement. This policy was a result of a snowballing of use initiatives. I'm using the word snowballing because in 2010 we launched a Europe 2020 strategy. It already had a use component which was called use on the move, but then the crisis came so you had to add more element. First we called it a use opportunities initiative to highlight for example the possibility of micro finance for young entrepreneurs, but then the crisis came in a ferocious way. You had the movement of the indignados in Spain, you had the riots in the UK in many cities, so we thought that this is really the time to go beyond the halfway solutions and the token issues will definitely not be enough. Let's try what is in the possibility of the EU to do as much as possible. So the commission made the proposal in 2012 December and within about three months the Irish presidency helped to hammer out an agreement in council. The official adoption was in April, but this is still in European standards a high-speed decision making and that luckily coincided with the budget debate and this budget, the outcome of the budget debate which also took place under the Irish presidency was extremely favourable for the social dimension. We got quite a few things which we wanted, but we were uncertain that we could get it. For example to have within cohesion policy a minimum share for the European social fund. For about 20 years the share of the social fund in cohesion policy went down and down and down because for many recipients who were autonomous to decide on the allocations, it was somehow more appealing to build motorways and roundabouts as opposed to investing in people. We thought in 2011 when the framework was designed that it's time to stop and if possible reverse this decline. We proposed a minimum share and while in many rounds it was not seen as the most hopeful, but at the end this was possible and within the European social fund we also ring ffans that part of the funding for measures related directly to social inclusion. This was again something that was not the case before. There was freedom for the member states to programme as they wished, but we insisted on defining priorities and then the end result was quite favourable. But beyond the European social fund there were several other smaller financial instruments which emerged from this debate. The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund was under threat. Ireland has been a beneficiary. Irish workers in many companies at the case of large scale redundancies were supported for a transitory period for retraining for example to be able to launch a new enterprise from the EGF, but there were far from real consensus some of the larger member states including one which is closest to you didn't want to see the the continuation of the EGF. Somehow the end game turned out to be positive and the same applies to another smaller fund which was called the European Aid to the Most Deprived. Again this is a small fund but in many countries extremely important that this fund exists plus on the top of that a new fund was created to top up the resources that go to help the young people. That was called the Use Employment Initiative. Normally the budget debates result in cutting funds rather than creating something new but in the end game of this under the Irish presidency I won't repeat it again right you choose to take it it was at your at the time. So this was newly introduced this was newly introduced because that was indeed the time when the leaders wanted to demonstrate that you know we are very unfortunate with this crisis but we are doing our utmost and creating a separate fund has some kind of symbolic importance to to to send a message that this is a European effort and there is a European value for it and I cannot resist mentioning that I had a very unlikely meeting about this with Enda Kenny in Davos where at the end of one of the dinars I had in Davos it turned out that there was an Irish dinner next door and at some point the prime minister appeared in the door and negotiated with various people about various things so I used this opportunity to raise the issue of the use guarantee and he he was indeed very well informed it was just a few weeks after the start of the presidency in Dublin and indeed it was clear that the new policy makes sense if there is an additional fund and I think he was fully supportive together with other prime ministers who were present in Davos so sometimes people wonder what is happening in Davos what kind of secretive meetings that take place the world of finance conspires against everybody else no in this particular occasion at least I can tell you that we used it to to nail down some key components of of the use employment initiative with the prime minister of the presidency country and so I mentioned two issues one use guarantee one the budgetary issues which I think for the social portfolio were very good outcome and there was a third remarkable example a joint work with your minister colleague John Burton on the social investment package which followed in the footsteps of a previous policy package the employment packages 2012 and whereby we wanted to demonstrate that the social policy in the EU is not reduced to employment but we also want to take care of the importance of preserving well functioning welfare states not only previous preserving but also just like in the case of the use guarantee to highlight which are the best examples the best models in Europe and give some kind of guidance support orientation towards upgrading and modernizing national welfare systems this clearly stretched into some areas which are member state competence but this was not at all an improvised exercise because because in 2010 when the Europe 2020 strategy was launched we already envisaged that at some point we have to deliver so-called recommendations on child poverty and addressing child poverty remain the centerpiece of the social investment package but by that time also because of the crisis we thought that it's much better to embed it in a broader package and also in this package we can address other issues of welfare systems for example homelessness there were some expectations among NGOs that commission would do something very big on homelessness which was not really allowed by the mood at that time when a lot of people thought that expectations were raised as compared to that a crisis came and we would need to close this gap as opposed to widen the gap between the EU expectations and the deliverables but still I think an excellent document was produced on homelessness and how to prevent and how to tackle it within the member state and what kind of EU support can be mobilized in this area on demography but also how to develop the social economy within member states which I think was one of the interesting parts of our activity so this and one of the big presidency conferences actually not in Dublin but in Leuven in the Irish College took place about the social investment package after it was published so I think also now these achievements are looked at very important steps the European Union made at this time number one to clarify that Europe is not about to give up what was already achieved by member states and and by the EU level together but building on the existing best models mobilizing the resources which are available to move forward and I should just repeat that it was really a great pleasure to work with the Irish presidency on these issues and I could continue the list but I would like to make now a political point of this which is to highlight that at that time and also subsequently we saw an enormous gap between the Irish approach to the social dimension of the European Union and the British approach to the social dimension of the European Union. I have listed a number of examples which were seen as achievements at that time and I stress the decisive contribution of your presidency and maybe it's not necessary to say that there are there will always reluctant countries as well and one of the most reluctant countries whatever was the issue was the UK for example we were absolutely convinced that all UK regions would benefit from a use guarantee scheme that was also the feedback from various stakeholders in the UK but the government did it utmost that in the British context this expression would not be used right all other countries should use the word use guarantee but in Britain they should use their own vocabulary they had at the time of the experiment with a use contract and various other schemes which worked out at various quality but what they had as a use contract definitely fell short of the commitments of the use guarantee for example in terms of the deadline of how quickly a new job or learning opportunity should be given to the young people and it had no commitment to the quality of the job or the quality of the service which is to be provided and it lacked the effort to reach out to the needs they were focusing on those who were already registered as young unemployed but they had no calculation to reach out to the needs who are not even registered but dropped out of the school for example so it was a complex discussion on that front on the budgetary questions I already alluded to that the UK was not really keen on a variety of aspects and my missions to Britain at the time where for example trying to promote the aid for the most deprived which the social policy reforms of Mr Ian Duncan Smith would have necessitated they they changed the social benefit system which introduced a lot of conditionality and changed also the payment dates to the poor people and and that meant that a lot of people which were covered before were only covered at the end of a long period and it was very easy to drop out if you just missed a phone call or you didn't show up once you already missed out on on something important which gave rise to a lot of food banks in the UK for which the UK could still have used the EU fund for the most deprived but they decided not to they decided not to the UK also always refrain from using the globalisation adjustment fund despite the fact that members of the european parliament from the UK occasionally came to us that look in Yorkshire in elsewhere the reason need there there there was a dismissal there was a relocation of the company elsewhere but we said that look yes we are ready we're ready but it has to be asked from London it's the national government that needs to request the support and the the UK government always rejected this this idea now why am I saying this I'm mentioning these examples of the UK being a very reluctant if not negative player in the social dimension you know which adds to well-known stories on the working time directive for example in order to highlight that the lack of a visible social dimension of the european union in the UK was a contributing factor to the Brexit vote of course we know that from the very start from the time of Maastricht there was always opposition to EU membership there was always strong opposition to eurozone membership in in in the UK it's not a coincidence that Nigel Lawson was one of the figureheads of the leave campaign and it's less than 10 individuals who put together the money the campaign funding for the leave campaign last year so some very rich people surely but this was not the decisive factor decisive factor was that a lot of people in the midlands and in the north also shifted to the leave camp plus Wales because they felt left behind they felt excluded and even if I would say that it was primarily the policy of Westminster the policy or the lack of policy from London which resulted in these feelings and the opposition people showed with the leave vote was an opposition primarily to Westminster nevertheless the result was that the leave side one and the UK is leaving in my view this is um really a warning example for many others this is a warning example for for many others that number one the the the picture of a european union which is reduced to a free market may be favourable or favoured by some but this is not a picture of a european union that could carry the support and the confidence of wide social groups and and and and communities so the EU indeed has to continue maybe even more forcefully to ensure that economic prosperity is widely shared in terms of social groups but also in terms of various regions within individual countries so of course we have very limited capacity to kind of revisit the british case because even if you know british politics sometimes gives the impression of confusion there is a certain dynamic which i think already sealed the question of brexit and it will happen the only question is what kind of new relationships will emerge between the 27 countries and the united kingdom and it couldn't be a more pertinent question than than than here however i think this also holds some lessons about how to shape the social dimension of the european union for the future maybe you know that recently the commission launched a series of reflection papers and one of these reflection papers actually the very first one is focusing on the social dimension of the european union and the publication of this document coincided with the publication of a communication on the european pillar of social rights which is in a way a conclusion of a year-long debate across the member states and with various stakeholders i would say that i think the lessons of my irish and british experience could be summed up in three points and then we could discuss many others during the rest of the time but my three conclusive points are the following number one is that in the european union we have to speak about a social dimension and not purely a social policy right in the in the in the text of the treaty but also very often in the european debates there is a very clear definition of what social policy is and interestingly the EU vocabulary is not the same as the vocabulary of social science because in the EU treaty vocabulary social policy is practically about how to regulate the workplace and what kind of labour legislation and EU action is there to support a level of playing field in terms of working conditions the working time health and safety and similar areas but i think the point is that the social pact if i may use this expression the social pact about the european union is much wider is much wider than what you find in the social policy chapter of the treaty it includes many other components which in the area of the budget for example in the area of the regulation of the single market in the area of promoting regional development contribute to fulfilling the social objectives of the member states which means that yes the EU has to take care of this field which is defined in the treaty as a social policy and there are always new developments like today the consequences of automation and digitalization they give a homework to to modernize to update this part of the EU policy but equally important is to pay attention to the social dimension of many other issues i give you maybe just one example and then we can come come back to to others and we had in the last few years a big story about t-tip t-tip is trade but if you don't pay attention to the social dimension of t-tip then we will end up in a very difficult area where there will be no public consensus about the consequences of t-tip and there will be no public acceptance of trade and investment relations with the united states or other partners so i think this is a good example but we could find from many other further examples that the social dimension has to be controlled we cannot simply leave it to the invisible hand of the market whether it's inside the europea union or whether it is internationally what kind of social outcome various economic activities or various types of the integration will have of course we can extend this to the social dimension of the monetary union which we started to monitor in 2013 with a new scoreboard and i would say that still this forms a part on the reflections on the economic and monetary union which by the way is subject of another reflection paper that has already been published by the commission and they recycled many ideas that have already been put forward in 2012 in the so-called blueprint including automatic stabilizers for the EMU so that's point one about social policy and the social dimension the point two would be that when we speak about the social dimension i think we have to see that all arms of governance have to be used and mobilized in this area sometimes we feel that there is a simplification that social policy at the EU level is about legislation yes there is a core of EU social policy which is EU law in fact if you look at the totality of of labour legislation it's a smaller part of labour legislation which has been elevated to the level of the europea union and primarily this serves the purpose of having a level playing field and protect good working conditions in in in the member states but this portfolio has developed and used many other instruments i already mentioned one which i consider important the budgetary and i think whenever there is a new budget debate another is one it's very important to ensure that the budgetary instruments which support the social agenda are preserved and further fine tune developed and and can match the requirements of the day so these applies to the social fund but in 2010 we also recognized that the regional fund is also making a contribution to the fight against poverty for example and i already highlighted the importance of some of the smaller instruments of course there can be new configurations so it's not a necessity that all these funds are framed in the same form in the same way for all the time ahead but it's very important to see what function they serve and if that function is still necessary to continue with these instruments so this legislation funding but also policy coordination is very important and the example of the use guarantee was used the final point is that in this reflection paper which we saw there is a question whether the social dimension of the EU should be connected with just one issue the free movement of workers or with the eurozone so a kind of territorial restriction or it should be deepened for the EU as a whole in my view only the third option works i think free movement is very very narrow there are many other issues including the legislation i cited which go well beyond free movement and provide the the the social base for the functioning of the single market and the single market is not only the eurozone even if the british question maybe uh you know outdated soon but but but the eurozone will not be the same as the entire EU for some time and i think it's very important that countries that for the time being not part of the eurozone will be fully integrated in the design but also the implementation of the EU social agenda