21 Amendments of Frédéric DAERDEN related to 2012/2293(INI)
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas social housing, which is a large and varied sector in the EU, plays a key part in the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy; whereas this sector makes an active contribution to achieving the goal of making the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy by helping to ensure high levels of employment, productivity and social inclusion and cohesion, as well as to combating both climate change and energy poverty;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas the economic and financial crisis will have a long-term impact, not only on economic growth, employment rates and poverty and exclusion levels but also on ease of access to housing and on investment in affordable social housing in the Member States;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C b (new)
Recital C b (new)
Cb. whereas austerity and fiscal consolidation measures must go hand-in- hand with an overall strategy of investment in sustainable, inclusive growth in pursuit of the Europe 2020 objectives, including as regards combating poverty and social exclusion;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C c (new)
Recital C c (new)
Cc. whereas the EU-27 unemployment rate rose above 10% in January 2012 and whereas young people, low-skilled workers and the long-term unemployed have been particularly hard-hit; whereas, given that, at the same time, Europe's population is ageing, this development carries with it a serious risk of households no longer being able to find or hold on to housing and could have an irreversible impact on social and urban cohesion;
Amendment 54 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C d (new)
Recital C d (new)
Cd. whereas 80 million Europeans are currently at risk of poverty and homelessness, and whereas the proportion of children and adults living in jobless households rose to nearly 10% in 2010; whereas this development, combined with the increase in the number of working poor and the high level of youth unemployment, cannot but result in a possibly long-term increase in the number of people at risk of poverty and homelessness;
Amendment 56 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C e (new)
Recital C e (new)
Ce. whereas social welfare and personal housing support schemes are increasingly coming under pressure as a result of rising house prices, falling revenues and the pressure to reduce costs;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C f (new)
Recital C f (new)
Cf. whereas investment in social housing is important in order to ensure that an adequate number of jobs are available at local level, stabilise the economy, keep property bubbles in check and combat energy poverty;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C g (new)
Recital C g (new)
Cg. whereas housing is a public good in respect of which Member States lay down, in line with their own policy choices, minimum standards of habitability and comfort, specific urban planning and construction rules and maximum income percentages, with some regulating house price increases and even establishing mechanisms for providing social assistance or tax support to help out with what is the leading item of household expenditure;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C h (new)
Recital C h (new)
Ch. whereas Member States also establish and organise a parallel supply of social housing to complement the supply generated by the private market; whereas this social housing is made available under specific conditions by not-for-profit agencies set up specifically for this purpose; whereas 25 million European households are in social housing in respect of which local and regional planning requirements, access rules and prices are laid down directly by the public authorities in the Member States; whereas, owing to its stability and to the fact that prices are regulated, this parallel housing supply helps in particular to keep property market cycles and housing bubbles in check;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Reminds the Member States and the Commission that spending on social housing enables urgent social need to be met and, as strategic social investment, helps in a sustainable way to provide local jobs that cannot be ‘off-shored’, to stabilise the economy by preventing property bubbles, to counter climate change and to combat energy poverty; calls accordingly on Member States and the Commission to set out a European social housing action framework, which might take the form of an action plan or a framework for coordinating housing policy in such a way as to ensure consistency between the various policy instruments the EU uses to address this issue (State aids, structural funding, energy policy, action to combat poverty and social exclusion, health policy); calls on Member States and the Commission to bring social housing investment within the scheme of the European Semester by including in it an evaluation of targets for combating and preventing property bubbles;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Points out that social housing investment forms part of broader policy efforts to organise and fund public social, health and education services with a view to ensuring that basic social rights may be enjoyed and responding to new social needs and cyclical economic changes;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3 b (new)
Paragraph 3 b (new)
3b. Takes the view, therefore, that targeted social housing investment should be made a key strand of Union and Member State economic and employment policies and crisis-response strategies, with a view to meeting the social, employment and environmental objectives laid down under the Europe 2020 strategy;
Amendment 106 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Emphasises the need for tighter monitoring of social investment as part of a social investment pact modelled on the Euro Plus Pact and designed to strengthen the Union’s economic and budgetary governance and including investment in social housing, and for social investment targets which the Member States would be required to meet with a view to attaining the social, employment and education objectives laid down under the Europe 2020 strategy; welcomes the conclusions of the European Council meeting held in December 2012, which stress that ‘the possibilities offered by the EU's existing fiscal framework to balance productive public investment needs with fiscal discipline objectives can be exploited in the preventive arm of the Stability and Growth Pact’, thus bearing out the validity of this proposal;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Proposes the establishment of the European Housing Observatory to develop knowledge about the housing situation in the various countries, especially social housing, on the basis of reliable statistical indicators; stresses the need for the regular publication of EUROSTAT indicators (price, quality) regarding the housing dimension of social integration, together with regional and local statistics, so to as to assess what progress is being made;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Notes the growing impoverishment of the elderly in all the Member States and accordingly seeks the inclusion in the new European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on active and healthy ageing, which coordinates research in this area, of affordable measures specifically designed to ensure that the elderly are allowed to stay in their homes as long as possible; notes in this connection that action to improve current housing accessibility is a reasonable and feasible way of reducing assistance requirements by encouraging people develop closer links with their home and facilitating their social integration by measures to enhance their independence as individuals;
Amendment 133 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 1 a (new)
Subheading 1 a (new)
Include housing investments in a social investment pact
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Urges Member States to redouble their efforts to include social housing investment in their medium and long- term budgetary objectives, in their national reform programmes and in the strategic axes of the 2014-2020 Partnership Contact; calls on the European Council and Commission to monitor more effectively the implementation and achievement of the social objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy;
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5c. Notes that, in order to secure proper implementation of employment and social targets, the recently developed system for macroeconomic and budgetary surveillance in the EU must be supplemented by improved monitoring of social policies and social housing investments ; calls, therefore, on the Commission to consider developing a scoreboard of common social investment indicators for monitoring the progress made in the Member States and at Union level in this regard;
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 d (new)
Paragraph 5 d (new)
5d. Calls on the Member States to include social housing investments in the conclusion of a ‘social investment pact’, laying down investment objectives and creating an enhanced monitoring mechanism so as to step up efforts to achieve the social, employment and environment objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This ‘Social Investment Pact’ would contain a list of specific measures in form of social investments to be taken by Member States within a given timeframe in order to meet social housing targets and combat energy poverty in line with the social, employment and environment objectives of the Annual Growth Survey and National Reform Programmes; this should be subject to a regular surveillance framework with a strong role for the European Commission and the European Parliament and the involvement of all relevant formations of the Council;
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. AdvocatesWelcomes the Commission proposal to makinge priority investment in heat efficiency and in the use of renewables in social housing, as well as integrated projects for sustainable urban development, access to housing for marginalised communities and the promotion of social enterprises, eligible for Structural Fund support in the 2014-2020 budgetary period;
Amendment 159 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Regards such measures as necessary and considers that they must go hand in hand with the provisions of the energy efficiency directive and be accompanied by the necessary investment funding, not only from the ERDF but also through the establishment of a European dedicated investment fund;