The European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) today published its annual conclusions for 2017 in respect of 33 States Parties (European Social Charter (1961) and European Social Charter (revised) (1996)) showing 175 violations (36%), 228 situations of conformity (47%) and 83 cases (17%) where the Committee was unable to assess the situation due to lack of information, known as “deferrals”.
These conclusions concerned the articles of the Charter relating to the thematic group “Health, social security and social protection”:
- the right to safe and healthy working conditions (Article 3),
- the right to protection of health (Article 11),
- the right to social security (Article 12),
- the right to social and medical assistance (Article 13),
- the right to benefit from social welfare services (Article 14),
- the right of elderly persons to social protection (Article 23),
- the right to protection against poverty and social exclusion (Article 30).
The Committee expressed concern over the fact that, in many countries, poverty rate in Europe is unacceptably high and the measures taken to remedy this fundamental problem are insufficient. In particular, in many States the social security benefits (notably in respect of unemployment and old age) are well below the poverty line, even when taking into account social assistance, which remains too low.
The Conclusions 2017 per country are available on the Charter’s HUDOC database.
