Ingrid Robeyns

Biggest takeaway from this Forum: the centrality on skills (reskilling, upskilling) and competitiveness in the talks of EC-speakers at this event.

(Parallel sessions with mainly by outsiders, and regularly different from tone).

If I were a capitalist, I’d be very happy with this approach.

I just heard a keynote in a parallel session by Maja Göpel @beyond-ideology.bsky.social, which was very interesting - asking the foundational and bigger questions. Very different from the technocratic EU-led keynotes yesterday!

What I learnt from the EU employees who put this together is that they use the space they are given to also bring in other (non-neoliberal) voices into this conference. Several EU plenaries yesterday felt pretty neoliberal, but this second day, with smaller sessions, feels different.

#EuSocialForum
I enjoyed the wealth inequality panel. Great synergy between the contributions by Salvatore Morelli and Aline Muller, and the sociological reflections by Mike Savage, and my philosophical input.

Dit lijkt mij een zeer geschikt onderwerp voor een item op het journaal, een discussie bij de talkshows, of een uitgebreid stuk in de krant. Dit is waarvoor we media in een democratie nodig hebben: om de overheid te controleren, ook op haar contradicties.

If we agree there should be a floor beneath which no one falls, is it unreasonable to ask if there should also be a ceiling?

This week, we’re resharing a conversation with @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social on why placing limits at the top matter just as much as protections at the bottom.

buff.ly/2CO8ZfS

zeker het bestuderen waard, maar ik ben heel benieuwd naar de doorrekeningen voor verschillende groepen. En de effecten, want het geeft een sterke prikkel voor iedereen om niet te sparen, maar te consumeren. Dus wat als die 8% stijgt naar, zegge 20% en het enige wat je bezit is je huis?

Just spoke to another academic. We have so many unanswered questions, but we need to be patient. 😅 This is a political space, not an academic space. [the end].

PF Manole, Romanian minister speaks of "Competitiveness is right now the bible in Europe", and we need to add the focus of the poor in this bible.

MEP Toussaint: there are 170.000 occupational deaths each year. We needs jobs to be safe.
also:
"Everyone is employable". [not sure that is true; and certainly not to be able to earn a living]
Argues for dignified jobs.

very different questions in Slido for this panel than for earlier panels! Here's one that's not from me:

"non-take-up of social rights could be combatted much better if we'd listen more to the poor people."

ODS: "the reason this does not happen is because they talk in a language that the policy makers do not understand. So my role is to mainly listen, and translate their insights into policy language".

De Schutter: we would save a lot of time if we would co-design our policies by listening to those who suffer from poverty, and how they have troubles to access the social support they should have access to do. They speak of 'lack of decent jobs, lack of money, but also being disempowered'.

conference attendees can put questions to the panel, and someone dared to ask this:

"Why is the Commission not willing to just even consider ‘beyond growth’ approaches to poverty eradication and social justice?" 💥

#notholdingmybreaththatthiswillbeasked

[curious how this post-growth perspective will fall in the panel and the conference!]

Nor, however, is it a necessary condition. there are plenty of anti-poverty measures that we can put in measure that are not based on growth. That is the good news. We do not need to grow GDP to fight poverty .

First question, to Olivier De Schutter: how has poverty changed in the EU? We now have the fenomenon of the working poor. Work is no longer a guarantee against poverty. This is why activation measures are no longer sufficient.
Second, growth is no longer a sufficient condition to alleviate poverty.

#EUSocialForum - now the anti-poverty panel!

very refreshing to hear a keynote that centres on a non-economic, non-neoliberal value - social cohesion (understood as what a person needs to flourish in their community, to feel a sense of belonging).

Kompany: Sports is not just about health, but about social cohesion. We [=society] invest so much money in repression, it would be much better to invest in social cohesion [by supporting sport].

Stresses that the core, however, is food, a roof over your head, etc. and he strongly stresses that he also supports this. But next there needs social cohesion.

Vincent Kompany: Successful people from [disadvantaged] backgrounds need to give back to those communities..

He has so far not mentioned the word 'race' or 'racism', but just made it very clear.
Same with social class - he describes how it makes people not see what doors could be open to them.
He uses sport as a way to create a community to support disadvantaged youth.

#EUSocialForum

Vincent Kompany speaking about the importance of equal opportunities, and how his [white] mother, who worked for the public employemnt agency, warned him and his siblings that they would have to work double to get the same opportunities, compared with white kids.

#EUsocialforum

The moderator says "there are 800 people in this room, and more in the spillovers".

There are 5 women's toilets in this building.

If that says something about the organisational capacities of the EU, we are in deep trouble.

Q&A. Clearly, this is the vice-president of employment. But it is really striking how so many of the answers end with the needs of the industries, as well as human beings in their roles as employees. Hence, the neoliberal script of seeing us primarily and mainly as economic agents.

stresses that she wants to take into account equally the concerns of employers, as well as employees.

That sounds good as a principle, but I'm worried that genuine tensions and conflicts will then not be discussed, and then the most powerful will win.

the EU project was created decades ago; but the world is very different. Can we deal with this change? Can Europe equip its citizens to deal with this change? There is real disruptive transformation happening, e.g. due to AI.

#EUSocialForum
Roxana Mînzatu, Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, European Commission: why are we doing this work?
Her response: to empower people in Europe.

[interesting because it's a value not mentioned in many EU docs. But what does it mean for her?]

I am counting on Olivier De Schutter to talk truth to power in that panel!