Recital (10)

The Union headline targets for 2030 were welcomed by the Heads of State or Government at the Porto Social Summit and by the June 2021 European Council. They will help, together with the Social Scoreboard, in monitoring progress towards the implementation of the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights as part of the policy coordination framework in the European Semester. In addition, the Porto Social Summit called on Member States to set ambitious national targets which, taking due account of the starting position of each Member State, should constitute an adequate contribution to the achievement of the Union headline targets for 2030. Between September 2021 and June 2022, at the invitation of the Commission, Member States submitted their national targets. At the June 2022 Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council, the ministers of the Member States stressed the importance of closely following the progress achieved towards the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and the Union headline targets for 2030. Against that background, progress on those national targets is monitored in the Joint Employment Report adopted by the Council on 11 March 2024 (the Joint Employment Report 2024), and is integrated into the monitoring tools for the European Semester. In addition, the Joint Employment Report 2024 contained, on a pilot basis, a first-stage country analysis on potential risks to upward social convergence, based on the features of the Social Convergence Framework, identifying seven Member States as experiencing potential risks. That conclusion led to a deeper second-stage analysis for those seven Member States, which showed that overall challenges were not confirmed for all of them.