Within the framework of the Social Policy and Politics course, we discussed the European Semester process and analysed the report issued for Bulgaria, the EU Member State in which our university is located. Now we could confront the contents of the report with EU’s reform suggestions issued for 2020: in late May 2020, the Council of the EU issued Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) for individual EU Member States.

This year’s CSRs for Bulgaria in the social sphere could traced back to the earlier Commission’s report, which highlighted high rates of economic inequality in the country; significant regional disparities; low levels of digital skills; inadequate or missing links between education institutions and business environment; and ineffective public administration. At the same time, one can identify numerous references the recent COVID-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic impacts. In this regard, the Explanatory Referendum preceding the recommendation states that the outbreak of the coronavirus and the extraordinary measures undertaken to limit the spread of the disease has had a negative effect on the Bulgarian economy, which could further exacerbate the existing regional and societal imbalances.

As a consequence, this year’s reform recommendations for Bulgaria address earlier deficiencies through the prism of the current COVID-19 situation. The Council recommends that thee counutry implements all measures that deem necessary to overcome the pandemic and bring the country’s economy back on the growth track. Specifically, it should boost accessibility and resilience of its healthcare system; ensure equal access of all social groups to education and enhance the population’s digital skills. In the context of the post-pandemic recovery, the country should also offer continued support for business, especially for SMEs, and lower their administrative burden by implementing effective public administration reforms.

A new theme  developed this year’s CSRs is the issue of green transition. For Bulgaria, public and private investments in these two spheres are essential to ensure the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery, but also to achieve its long-term goal of the decarbonization of the economy, as set by the European Green Deal.

It remains to be seen whether the country will pursue reforms in the directions indicated by the Council. However, it seems that in view of the COVID-19 crisis and the increasingly evident challenge posed by the climate change, EU Member States may be required to take more decisive actions and outline an ambitious reform agendas than those implemented in the past.

by Yoanna Arabadzheva, Alexander Goudev and Plamen Markov

During the Spring 2020 semester, students taking Social Policy and Politics in the EU course worked in groups to  socially-oriented campaigns. In their presentations and campaign descriptions they were to outline the rationale for your campaign; measures / actions that the campaign will involve; its target audience as well as its projected outcomes. On the course’s website, we will present several of their ideas in the form of separate posts.

The recent CORONA-19 pandemic has deeply affected the entire world. Many businesses have had to close down, oil prices have dropped and more importantly people are unable to find work. Due to many workers not being essential and to protect themselves, they have been told to remain at home and not go outside without need. While for some this is a pleasant vacation from the huge amounts of work and others can work from home if need be, for many people, especially in Bulgaria, this is a complete nightmare. The statistic shows that the unemployment rate for March 2020 stood at 6.7%. There are 220,072 unemployed people registered at the Bulgarian public employment center, with many of them (26,286) registered after the emergency situation. The hotel and restaurants sectors are the one most affected by these changes as they typically employ low-skilled temporary labor. The people working in this sector can barely make ends meet, usually moving from one job to another or only being able to work part-time. Measures need to be introduced to help these workers recover once the situation returns to normal.

The Bulgarian authorities have put forward the 60/40 assistance scheme as a way to deal with the economic situation after the pandemic. The plan is for the state to pay 60% of the expenses on wages and social-security benefits to the employer so he can keep his employees and not have to fire them. The other 40% is paid by the employer himself. The scheme will target the sectors that will be most affected by this change, including tourism and restaurants and etc. As they usually rely on part-time workers, this will be important. In order to qualify, employers will either have to have been closed by order of the state or closed on their own and prove that they would incur losses from the business being stopped. 

On paper the scheme looks fine but in reality it is flawed. First, to cover 40% of the labor-related expenses can be too much for some of the sectors. Without revenue, they cannot contribute their share of workers’ pay and social payments. Another issue is that the process itself can be confusing or some aspects not being well implemented, such as those related to electronic signatures. As such many companies will be unable to make use of this scheme and have to lay off workers anyway.

The goal of the campaign is to give the people from the restaurant and night club sector a voice. Due to the circumstances a regular protest is impossible, so we will organize an online one. Chairs with signs with the names of all participating night clubs and restaurants will be placed in front of the Council of Ministers, separated by 2 meters from each other, as the official social distancing requirement has it. On a large screen near the chairs, the demands of the owners and managers of these companies for more financial support will be broadcast from Facebook. These would include, first and foremost, the change of the proportion of the scheme’s assistance from 60/40 to 80/20 measure as well as a tax break until the end of the year. The outcome of the campaign will be to have these demands be heard and possibly discussed with the relevant ministers. Our social partners are the associations of hoteliers and restaurants.

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by Alexandra Gouleva, Evita Kuriga and Laine Ostrovska

During the Spring 2020 semester, students taking Social Policy and Politics in the EU course worked in groups to  socially-oriented campaigns. In their presentations and campaign descriptions they were to outline the rationale for your campaign; measures / actions that the campaign will involve; its target audience as well as its projected outcomes. On the course’s website, we will present several of their ideas in the form of separate posts.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has brought about a world health and economic crisis with many people having to transition to working remotely with the exception of workers in industries EU governments have deemed “essential.” These essential workers often fulfill jobs and duties that are low-paid and underappreciated by the general society until the pandemic hit. This pandemic has served to highlight and exacerbate the issues these workers have been facing for years. 

Many who work in the food service, gig-economy, healthcare, factories and more have no choice and are forced to continue working in unsafe environments because their wages are well below the standard of living and they cannot risk unemployment. Many of them do not receive hazard pay, nor do employers increase their wages for their work or provide them with PPE. Statistics and news reports do well to exemplify the reality of the working conditions and treatment of essential workers in these particular sectors.

The goal of the campaign is to bring awareness to the reality essential workers face and fight for their essential rights, pay, and treatment. The campaign will focus on bringing awareness of the issue to the general public and also work closely with social partners in order to ensure the EU and companies will act effectively, so that there can be a change on a national and European level. Public mobilization will be achieved through an active social media presence and cooperation with news outlets to cover essential workers’ stories. Using external lobbying we will target EU institutions, companies, and social partners to motivate them to reach agreements and pass laws that will protect essential workers and their rights. 

Social partners have a very important role for the campaign success. We will work to engage with them the most due their access to the EU policy makers and ability to protect essential workers’ rights through sectoral or company bargaining as well as tripartite with the government. We will engage social partners such as ETUC, CEEP and others. Especially trade unions can do a lot. Our campaign will encourage people to join trade unions to call out employers about inadequate policies, sign petitions to call on the EU to act on specific measures, organize protests/strikes, etc. It is vital for our campaign that social partners push harder for better wages and workplace conditions. Discussions need to take place at the local, sector, administration, and firm level to promote a more effective response to the problems experienced by essential workers. 

The projected outcomes of the campaign and solutions are for the EU and social partners to agree on stricter standards for working conditions, as well as to protect workers’ physical and mental health. We aim to maximize financial benefits and protections for essential workers such as unemployment benefits and hazard pay. We hope the campaign will be a step in the right direction of securing a living wage standard across the EU and will bring a greater appreciation for essential workers.

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During the Spring 2020 semester, students taking Social Policy and Politics in the EU course worked in groups to  socially-oriented campaigns. In their presentations and campaign descriptions they were to outline the rationale for your campaign; measures / actions that the campaign will involve; its target audience as well as its projected outcomes. On the Module’s website, we will present several of their ideas in the form of separate posts.

Campaign in Support of Roma Communities amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Zdravko Cherkezov, Milka Stoycheva and Sofija Gajic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a defining moment in European history. For Roma communities, it is a life-or-death moment. There are 12 million Roma dispersed all around Europe, and most of them live in shanty towns with no access to water, electricity, or sanitation: a recipe for disaster during a COVID-19 pandemic. In Bulgaria, the home of 750 000 Roma people, misery and starvation loom as large as the threat of the invisible virus. With 86% at-risk poverty rate, and 55% pre-crisis unemployment rate among Bulgarian Roma, a socioeconomic crisis was always going to hit Roma people the hardest, but the COVID-19 crisis is the worst possible scenario. Since the Roma people have mainly been active in the informal sector, they are completely excluded from these emerging corona-response related social protection measures. Without an income or social support, thousands are left without the means by which to purchase food. It is paramount that we act to change that.

In response to these challenges, we have created a campaign whose main goal is to create opportunities for informed dialogue between government officials and the Bulgairian civil society. We will work to help NGOs voice their demands and influence the national strategy with regards to the treatment of Roma people amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. 

By means of open letters, petitions, and organized discussion panels between stakeholders we will put forward a number of proposals for the better treatment of the Roma community. Among the main propositions are the permanent removal of the walls around all Roma neighborhoods, the establishment of facilities for clean running water, the mobilization of a bigger number of health mediators for the purpose of informing the Roma communities about the disease, as well as the provision of social safety net for the Roma, who have lost all sources of income due to the crisis. We will also use traditional and non-traditional media channels to raise awareness among the Bulgarian citizens about the campaign. 

The whole European community has a great interest in improving the treatment of the Roma in the current crisis. We urge fellow Member States, such as Romania and Slovakia, to join our campaign. The Roma deserve to live better lives, and with urgent action now, we hope to deliver such promise. Who knows, maybe after the crisis Europe will emerge with an EU-wide Roma Strategy.

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On 7 April, we held a class on cross-border assistance offered to transnationally mobile  workers in countries in which they perform their work. In this context, we hosted a guest speaker – Mr Szabolcs Sepsi from the Fair Mobility Initiative. The Fair Mobility initiative is a project run by the German state and DGB, the country’s biggest trade union confederation, which aims to support mobile workers from CEE who fell victim of exploitation while working in Germany. It also raises awareness of the German labour law among foreign employees, promoting legal employment and fair working conditions.

The talk was extremely interesting, especially its part related to the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on working conditions of transnationally mobile workers in Germany. According to Mr Sepsi, two types of impacts are discernible. First, many workers are unlawfully dismissed ‘from one day to the other’. Such employees are in acute need of assistance since when they get fired they lose not only their source of income, but often also accommodation, as the latter tends to be provided by the employer. Second, those who remain employed oftentimes are forced to work additional hours in order to meet the growing demand for certain products. The latter development is typical for the meat industry, which was notorious for the bad working conditions already before the coronavirus outbreak. Also this group of workers requires FM’s team assistance in enforcing their labour rights.

Another interesting aspect of Mr Sepsi’s intervention ere the effects of the current lockdown on the bargaining power of German seasonal workers in the agriculture industry. The fact that fewer workers are available this year work should in principle put seasonal workers in a favourable position and allow it to demand higher wages and working conditions. In many cases, however, restrictions on spatial mobility imposed as part of the anti-COVID 19 measures do not allow them to leave their workplaces and use the threat of changing employers as a bargaining tool.

All in all, the talk highlighted the crucial importance of transnationally mobile CEE workers for Western European economies. At the same time, it also revealed that the hard work performed by them is not always adequately valued.

Our Module ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’ foresees an annual Debate on a social policy aspect featuring in a given year’s European Semester report on Bulgaria.

This year’s Debate plans to address challenge of reconciling the ambitious goals of climate neutrality and green transition, enshrined in the European Green Deal, with  the need to ensure access to affordable energy for the Bulgarian population. It will bring together representatives of the European Commission Representation in Sofia; Bulgarian and Polish experts on energy poverty, Bulgarian civil society representatives, as well as students from AUBG and Sofia University.

The event was initially to take place in late March 2020. However, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related health and security measures, it will be postponed to autumn 2020.

I will post regular updates on the Debate’s organization. Let us hope that the global and European anti-COVID 19 situation will soon improve! For the time being, the health of our speakers and conference participants  is of utmost importance.

Within the amework of our ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’ course, students prepared Policy Memos outlining policy measures that could be implemented within the framework of the Youth Guarantee scheme to combat youth unemployment in their countries or an EU Member State of their choice.

Many interesting initiatives have been proposed. For instance, one of the students sought to tackle the high rates of youth unemployment rates and emigration of young people from Latvia’s economically least developed regions. She accordingly suggested a subsidy system that would support the transfer of companies’ production facilities to these localities, combined with a training program for the local youth designed to match their qualifications with the employers’ needs.

Addressing a similar problem in a Bulgarian context, another person suggested the creation of local expert boards matching business and education institutions located in the country’s non-capital regions. The aim of the initiative was to ensure that curricula at higher education institutions – and skills gained by the young people, respectively – meet local labour market needs.

Yet another policy scheme aimed at tackling the shortage of Bulgaria’s healthcare personnel, in particular nurses. The proposal envisaged the organization of promotional campaign and information sessions designed to encourage secondary school students to take up the profession.

What were the lessons taken from the policy memo? Two points are of particular relevance here. First, early all proposals highlighted the necessity of involving a wide range of stakeholders, especially employers and their organizations. Second, the majority sought to combat youth unemployment while simultaneously promoting a more balanced development and reducing inequality between different regions, ethnic and social groups. Such a comprehensive approach to the underlining causes of youth unemployment is well taken, especially in view of high level of income inequality and regional disparity in the students’ countries of origin.

Within the framework of the Jean Monnet Module ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’, a course on EU social policy is taught at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) for the three consecutive years, starting in the Spring 2020 semester.

Jean Monnet Module ‘Social Policy and Politics in the EU’ (SPPEU) (610827-EPP-1-2019-1-BG-EPPJMO-MODULE) focuses on EU social dimension. It examines EU social acquis and policy initiatives; national actors’ EU-level activism; and challenges faced by the EU in the social field.