01 Jan. 2024 (OSH)

The Council of the European Union will be headed by Belgium for the first six months of 2024, a special year for the EU institutions because next June, the citizens of the 27 Member States will elect 720 Members of the European Parliament and the term of office of the current college of European Commissioners will end in October 2024.

Building on the European Pillar of Social Rights, the Belgian Presidency aims to equip the EU with a strong social agenda to promote a European society that is more inclusive, gender-equal and fair for all. This is necessary given the current context with its many challenges, including an ageing population and environmental and technological transitions, for example driven by Artificial Intelligence. Hence the importance of decent wages, good quality work and strong social protection. The Presidency will seek to strengthen social dialogue at all levels, promote fair labour mobility, mental health at work as well as access to sustainable social protection.

EU-OSHA contributes to this ambitious agenda by participating in a high-level conference on mental health and work and in an event on the Roadmap on Carcinogens. The thematic day of the Senior Labour Inspectors Committee (SLIC) also deals with carcinogens at work.

Belgium also wants to lay a solid foundation for the EU Strategic Agenda 2024-2029. As such, it can help shape the broad directions taken by the EU in the near future.

“Belgium assumes the rotating presidency for the thirteenth time, at a moment when the European Union stands at a crossroads, dealing with the consequences of the Russian illegal aggression in Ukraine, the pandemic, the energy crisis, disinformation, extreme climate events, and a renewed conflict in the Middle East,” said the council in a statement.

The Belgian presidency will work for better protection of European citizens and to strengthen cooperation between member states, it added. It also stressed that the six-month presidency “will provide particular attention to maintaining our unwavering support to Ukraine.”

After Belgium, Hungary will take over the rotating presidency on July 1 for the next six months.

DW reported

Asked what makes Belgium especially suited to take over the presidency of the EU Council in January, a smiling Foreign Minster Hadja Lahbib recently said “compromis a la belge [Belgian compromise], that is our secret.” At the December presentation of Belgium’s presidency agenda, she added that “we are better in finding solutions than creating problems.”

Lahbib, who is from the French-speaking region of Wallonia, only entered politics a year-and-a-half ago after a career as a television journalist. She describes Belgium as a “multilingual, multiethnic country with many ideas” that is used to discussions and seeking out compromise. Lahbib herself was born to Algerian immigrant parents.

It’s up to the Belgian presidency to finalize over 100 outstanding legislative projects in the European Union, together with the European Parliament, until the end of April. Among them are efforts to reform asylum processing in the bloc and regulate artificial intelligence.

At the end of April, the European Parliament will meet for its last plenary session before the European elections are held in the first week of June. Any legislative projects that haven’t been completed by then will have to be tackled by the next European Parliament and a newly formed European Commission in the fall.

Time is pressing

The Belgian government has little time to waste. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who hails from Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region, wants to push through laws that will facilitate a green restructuring of the economy and increase Europe’s global competitiveness. De Croo has said Europeans expect the EU to deliver results ahead of the European elections.

“That means protecting our people, that means strengthening our economy, that means preparing a shared future,” said De Croo, summarizing Belgium’s agenda for the presidency. “For Belgium it is the 13th time that we will take over the presidency. We should be knowing what we are doing, [and] I am convinced that we have quite some experience.”

At a special summit on February 1, the Belgian government must try to work out a long-term EU budget that includes €50 billion ($55.3 billion) in aid for war-torn Ukraine. At the last EU summit in December, Hungary blocked this with a veto.

“It is important that we show our continued support for Ukraine,” said De Croo, adding that “the unity of that union will be of critical importance to determine our shared success in the many challenges that are ahead.” He did not, however, spell out how he intends to change the mind of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Working with euroskeptic Hungary is difficult, but cooperation is necessary because Hungary will take over the rotating presidency in the second half of 2024, after Belgium. Hearings will be held over rule of law issues in Hungary, according to Foreign Minster Lahbib. Even so, she remains optimistic. “We work in a trio, for me it is a presidency like any other.”

But it remains unclear whether the first intergovernmental talks on the agreed opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova will take place in the first half of 2024. Belgium wants to focus on enlarging the bloc and preparing the EU to take in new members.

Urgently needed reforms

The EU cannot continue operating as before, according to Janis Emmanouilidis of the European Policy Centre. Discussions about the EU’s internal mechanisms and strategic foreign policy goals are urgently needed, he said at an event in December.

The coming year, Emmanouilidis said, poses many potential challenges for the bloc, among them possible Russian expansionism toward EU borders, a rightward lurch in the European elections and the possible reelection of Donald Trump in the United States.

“If Putin is watching us, if the European elections don’t go well, if the US elections don’t go well, he might challenge us,” said Emmanouilidis. “Are we prepared for such a situation?” He also said “the old logic no longer works, but the fact that we have at least understood how bad the situation is, that we are more brutally honest, is good news, not bad news.” That’s why, he said, strategic discussions are overdue under the Belgian presidency.

The Presidency of the Council of the EU is shared among the national governments of the Member States, transferring from one Member State to another every six months, on 1 January and 1 July each year. The office of the Presidency comes with significant responsibility: the host Member State chairs meetings of the Council of the EU, one of the EU’s major decision-making bodies, during its term. In addition, the Presidency is responsible for ensuring that Member States work in harmony, negotiating compromises when necessary, and at all times acting in the interest of the EU as a whole.

The Presidency’s programme of work is shared by three Member States (the ‘Presidency trio’) over an 18-month period. The Presidency sets out detailed goals that it wants to achieve during its period of office and, with the other Presidency trio members, longer-term objectives that could not realistically be achieved in only six months.