In May 2015, the European Commission published its country-specific recommendations (CSRs) for each Member State to help them strengthen and sustain the economic recovery at national level. The recommendations build on national reports presented by EU countries earlier this year as part of the European Semester economic governance process.
This year the Commission has assessed Member State’s performance in implementing last year’s country-specific recommendations and has concentrated its recommendations on key areas for building a lasting recovery.
Follow this link to access those CSRs
Together with the recently published Ageing Report 2015, those recommendations provide extensive information, statistics and data on national economic, fiscal and social challenges at EU and national levels.
In a press release, however, AGE Platform Europe calls for more caution when reforming social protection systems to address loss in healthy life expectancy. Indeed, the Healthy Life Years indicator, which measures the number of years that a person at birth is still expected to live in a healthy condition, is missing in those documents. Considering the existing important gap between the life expectancy in general and life expectancy in good health, we may therefore wonder whether it is socially acceptable to expect people to stay at work for longer and be more productive if at the same time their healthy life expectancy is decreasing and is already several years below the official retirement age?
Moreover, the CSR should clearly state that national governments must consider social, economic and environmental objectives on an equal footing, in order to ensure that both Europe 2020 and the European Semester underpin EU social and equality provisions.
