Social policy: scoreboard on implementing the agenda

PURPOSE : to present a Communication on the scoreboard on implementing the social policy agenda. CONTENT : the Nice European Council endorsed the Social Policy Agenda until 2005. It invited the Commission to present annually a scoreboard outlining the progress made in implementing the Agenda, starting with the first report to be submitted to the Stockholm Summit. The presentation of a scoreboard, a few months after the Agenda's endorsement in Nice, means that a number of initiatives are only at a first stage while some achievements are the result of initiatives launched before the Social Policy Agenda. However, implementation is a dynamic process linking the old to the new, and involving many actors at different levels. Therefore, this dynamic and flexible aspect is reflected in the scoreboard. Despite the early period in the implementation phase of the Social Policy Agenda, significant progress has already been made to put in place concrete policy measures. Through the Social Policy Agenda, the European Union aims to create the context and the framework for economic and social actors to meet the challenge of demographic, technological, economic and social change and to realise Europe's full employment potential and greater social cohesion. The Nice European Council outlined six main social policy orientations, on which the scoreboard now reports: - promoting more and better jobs; - anticipating and capitalising on change in the working environment; - combating poverty; - exclusion and discrimination; - modernising social protection; - promoting gender equality and social policy, in particular for enlargement. �