World Summit for social development (Copenhagen 1994): the European Union's follow-up

Adopting the report by Mrs Inger SCHÖRLING (Green, S) on the follow-up to the World Summit for social development, Parliament expresses its concern over delays in the formulation of an overall and unambiguous strategy for social development. It calls on the Member States to implement the conclusions of all the major international conferences (Rio, Vienna, Cairo, Beijing and Istanbul) and asks the Council to take concrete measures to reduce greenhouse gases in the EU by 15% by the year 2010. With regard to priorities at EU level, Parliament considers the fight against poverty and social exclusion to be a top priority and calls for an effective policy in this area, in view of the new Treaty of Amsterdam. It calls on the Council to adopt the fourth programme to combat poverty as soon as possible. The other priority for the Union is to combat unemployment. Parliament therefore calls on the Commission to submit specific proposals for tax and welfare systems which will be more effective in promoting employment. It also calls on the Member States to draw up employment action plans to cut the unemployment rate and strongly to support the social economy sector. Dialogue with NGOs operating in the social field and other representative organizations in this sector should be encouraged. With regard to priorities at the international level, Parliament invites the Commission and the Member States to make greater efforts in strengthening cooperation with the ILO, the World Bank, the UN specialized agencies, the IMF and the WTO. It calls upon all countries to work on a programme for debt reduction for the poorest countries and proposes in particular that the Member States allocate on average 20% of their development aid funds to basic social programmes. The recipient countries should equally allocate 20% of their budgets in support of basic social services (education, primary health care, nutrition programmes and safe drinking water and sanitation). The plenary, however, did not incorporate a proposal by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs to introduce a global tax on international currency speculation. This paragraph suggested that a 5% tax on exchange operations could raise $ 1500 billion a year to go into a 'global fund for human security', thus making it possible to reduce the debts of the poorest countries. Parliament hopes that EU official development aid will reach 0.7% of GDP. It calls on all countries to actively enforce the ILO Conventions on basic labour standards, freedom of association and collective bargaining, prohibition of forced labour and slavery and other fundamental conventions. It calls on the Commission and the Member States to actively enforce social and ethical regulations in international trade and to support initiatives such as 'Social Accountability 8000', a world-wide standard for ethical control based on the UN and ILO Conventions. �