Our partner, Caritas Europa, has joined more than 300 organisations in an open letter to call on the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council of the EU to introduce social conditionality in the final agreement of the reform to the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) currently under discussion. Concretely, they are asking to make EU agriculture funds conditional on the respect for labour rights in agriculture.
At least ten million people are employed in European agriculture, mainly as seasonal workers, day labourers or in other insecure statuses. Therefore, the co-signers argue that introducing social conditionality to the CAP reform will help improve living and working conditions for many people, particularly as the CAP is a flagship EU policy that receives one-third of the total EU budget.
While CAP subsidies currently include conditionalities on respect for basic environmental standards, public health and animal welfare, compliance with human and labour rights plays no role. Thus, the organisations call for a social conditionality that covers various areas such as declared employment, equal treatment, remuneration, working hours, health and safety, housing, gender equality, social security, and fair conditions for all workers employed in agriculture, including mobile and migrant labourers. Moreover, they highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic its a unique opportunity to make European agriculture truly sustainable and socially just.
To read the open letter and access more information about this, you can visit Caritas Europa website.
For more information on our advocacy work in the area of Employment and active inclusion, please visit our thematic page thematic page.