The role of social partners in the Post-Lisbon strategy: the European sectoral social dialogue

In their joint statement on the Europe 2020 strategy, the European social partners insist on the need to include social partners at all levels (European, national, regional and local levels) in the design and monitoring of the reforms in order to guarantee the success of the post Lisbon strategy. At the time of the Lisbon strategy, the social partners were involved in the achievement of the objectives through variable ways. However, it seems that the weight of the social partners on the process was rather limited (Baradel & Welz 2005, de la Porte & Pochet 2003, 2004, Léonard 2005, Gold 2007). In this communication, we will study the specific case of the European sectoral social dialogue (ESSD). Despite many critics (Branch 2005, de Boer et al. 2005, Keller 2003), it seems ESSD has potential to respond to the challenges raised by European integration to the social market economy. Until now, more than 500 joint texts have been adopted by the sectoral committees and 40 sectors have formed an ESSD committee (European Commission 2010). However, this dynamic is undermined by the lack of knowledge the European social partners have about the effective implementation of their joint texts within the national contexts. Those texts are non binding and the European social partners have no means to constrain their affiliates to follow their recommendations. This weakness raises the issue of the legitimacy and the ability of the social partners to handle European issues and to be involved in the creation of a European social model. Our objective is here to highlight the mechanisms that could favour the implementation of the joint texts within the EU member states and then enable the European social partners to be involved and to weight on the post-Lisbon strategy