Recital (8)

The European Pillar of Social Rights sets out twenty principles and rights to support well-functioning and fair labour markets and welfare systems, structured around three categories: equal opportunities and access to the labour market; fair working conditions; and social protection and inclusion. Those principles and rights give strategic direction to the Union, ensuring that the transitions to climate-neutrality, environmental sustainability and digitalisation and the impact of demographic change are socially fair and just and preserve territorial cohesion. The European Pillar of Social Rights, with its accompanying Social Scoreboard, constitutes guidance to monitor the employment, skills and social performance of Member States, including upward social convergence in the Union, within the European Semester, to drive reforms and investments at national, regional and local levels and to reconcile the social and the market aspects of today’s modern economy, including by promoting the social economy. On 4 March 2021, the Commission issued an Action Plan for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (the Action Plan), including ambitious yet realistic Union headline targets for 2030 on employment (that at least 78 % of the population aged 20-64 should be in employment), skills (that at least 60 % of all adults should participate in training every year) and poverty reduction (that at least 15 million fewer people should be at risk of poverty or social exclusion, including 5 million children) (the Union headline targets for 2030) and complementary sub-targets, as well as a revised Social Scoreboard.