Brussels, 31 January 2024
A very warm welcome to our Val Duchesse Summit. It is a pleasure to have you all here. I must say when we decided together to have the Val Duchesse Summit on 31 January, we had no clue that it would coincide with the commemoration for Jacques Delors, basically the founder or initiator of the Val Duchesse Social Dialogue It was here, in this very castle, on 31 January 1985, that Jacques Delors explained his vision for social dialogue for the future of the Europe Union. He believed very strongly that there could not be a united Europe without a Europe that is built on social dialogue. And he was so right, we know today by experience.
We know that we are stronger and better when we have in our economy the social market and thus the social partners. Let me just give you three examples that you all witnessed. The first was the time during the pandemic when the first lockdowns started. We together developed for the very first time on the European level, the SURE short-time employment where we all stood together. We made sure that employers did not have to lay off their employees when the lockdowns were there and there were no orders anymore. But thanks to European commitment, they kept their jobs. And with that, we kept the skills and the knowledge in the companies. And therefore, immediately at the end of the lockdowns, our companies could take the orders because they have the skills and the people in place in their companies. The second topic that I would like to recall is our discussions on the EU Directive on minimum wage and how much we shaped it together, because we are deeply convinced that the basis must be the collective bargaining in the Member States. And I think the final product is good because we had the social dialogue. My third example is our approach on how we implement our policies. Here, I would like to look at the European Green Deal. Over the last years, we have basically described the roadmap and formed the legal framework. But now, it is about implementation, and we know that implementation has to be tailor-made. And here we have started our industrial dialogues together with you to make sure that, yes, we share the same goal, but how we get there has to be tailor-made for each industrial ecosystem. The same applies to the structured dialogue we have now in agriculture where we define together how we are going to reach our goals in the future and what these difference scenarios are.
This is the hallmark of our social market economy, and this is the reason why we are here today. The world is changing rapidly. If we look at the clean transition, we basically see the changes in front of our doorstep. If you look at the Unites States massively investing in clean technology through the Inflation Reduction Act. If you look at China massively subsidising electric vehicles that come to our market. But also, look at the Gulf states who are basically sitting on oil and gas but investing in clean hydrogen, because they know these are the energies of the future and they want to dominate the market with these energies of the future too. For us is important that we push forward in the social dialogue when shaping our economy because we must, on the one hand keep the competitive edge. And on the other hand, we must make sure that no one is left behind. And this goes only if we work together. Today, we are taking important steps forward. We commit to each other, to do our part to address one of our key challenges facing our economy. That is labour and skill shortages. The Commission will present an Action Plan that we will prepare very closely with you. We have started the discussion already and we need all the knowledge on all the best practices that is out there to be successful in that field.
And this leads me to the reason why we gather here in Val Duchesse: We must consolidate the progress that we have made so far. We must make sure that this method continues to drive the work of the European institutions in the years to come. Therefore, the Val Duchesse declaration that we sign today is a commitment to work side by side, to strengthen the social dialogue and to join forces to address the key challenges of our time. The Commission will create a European Social Dialogue Envoy within the Commission so that you have a point of contact, so that the connection is tight and close, because too many things are happening. One person as point of contact, I think, is excellent for this common endeavour. Most important of all, the Commission will launch a joint declaration process that will lead to a ‘Pact for European Social Dialogue’. There is a lot of work ahead of us, but we want to do it together.
Let me cite, at the very end of my opening remarks, of course Jacques Delors, who said about the social partners ‘les forces vives de la société’, – this is how he called you – as one of the main drivers of European integration. 40 years later, this is still true. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Again, a very warm welcome to all of you. I am very glad that we have a combination of events today, now the Social Summit, afterwards the commemoration for Jacques Delors.
And with that, dear Prime Minister, I would like to give the floor to you.