Memorandum EU-Roemenië over bestrijding armoede en sociale uitsluiting ondertekend (en)

Vladimír Spidla, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, and the Romanian Minister for Labour, Social Solidarity and the Family, Mr Gheorghe Barbu, today signed the Joint Memorandum on Social Inclusion, the objective of which is to prepare Romania for participation in the European Social Inclusion Strategy. The Memorandum analyses the key political challenges in the social field and makes recommendations for the next steps in the struggle against poverty and social exclusion.

At a ceremony in Brussels to mark the signature of the Joint Memorandum on Social Inclusion with Romania, Mr Spidla said that the Memorandum would contribute "to our joint effort to build a socially inclusive Europe". Implementing the priorities set out in the Memorandum calls for long-term efforts and will determine, to a significant extent, the cooperation between the European Union and Romania.

The Memorandum lists the following as the most urgent priorities:

• increasing the efficiency of programmes to boost employment, with an emphasis on lifelong learning and on combating all forms of discrimination in all socio-economic sectors;
• finalising implementation of the reform of health services by eliminating discrepancies in territorial coverage and quality of medical services, modernising equipment in hospitals and clinics, improving collection mechanisms and redistribution of collected funds, strengthening the management, monitoring and evaluation of all the different types of care;
• intensifying measures to eliminate non-attendance in compulsory education, improve the adaptability of vocational and technical education to labour market demands and promote lifelong learning;
• covering the need for emergency and social housing and improving housing conditions in specific areas or for specific social categories;
• implementing the new national system of social assistance and social services, gradually improving the guaranteed minimum income, the support granted to families with children and the public pension system to ensure the elimination of severe poverty;
• finalising implementation of the Government strategy for the improvement of the Roma situation and in particular eliminating cases of people with no ID papers, supporting training and employment, education, health care, housing and infrastructure development programmes which promote the social inclusion of the Roma community and continue to fight against discrimination.

Mr Spidla stressed that the EU Structural Funds, particularly the European Social Fund, could make a substantial contribution to attaining these social inclusion objectives. The Memorandum provides that, in the run-up to accession, Romania will try to mobilise the national resources necessary to effectively combat social exclusion and that the European Commission will supplement these efforts with pre-accession aid.

To implement the Memorandum's objectives, the European Commission and Romania have agreed that investment in the administrative capacity of national, regional and local authorities is a priority. It is also important to significantly improve dialogue and cooperation between public structures themselves, as well as between these structures and civil society, the social partners and NGOs.