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THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS



 avers that the point of strengthening the social dimension is to minimise the risk of competition between social models that might result from the surrender of economic adjustment tools such as exchange rates or from fiscal policies being framed at European level, and to counter the negative impact of the crisis and austerity policies;

 urges that the social dimension of EMU allow for national social models to be maintained and co-exist, and points out that this is not meant to entail a harmonisation of social systems but to uphold the principle of "united in diversity";

 reiterates its call for better coordination of economic and social policies between the European and national levels of government under the European Semester, and calls for local and regional authorities to be more closely involved in this coordination;

 repeats its call to the Commission to address in more detail the issue of public spending quality;

 is concerned that because the scoreboard would be drawn up by aggregating national indicators, it might not show potential disparities existing at regional level; therefore suggests that more suitable tools be used to evaluate subnational disparities;

 asks the Commission to stipulate that in social matters the effort to address imbalances would not entail automatic triggering of sanctions if alert thresholds are exceeded. Rather, a mechanism should be used to prompt convergence towards joint objectives, and sharing of existing best practice should be encouraged;

 calls on the Commission to draw up a green paper on automatic stabilisers in the euro area.