Towards a Renewed European Social Contract

How can Europe tackle rising inequality and social exclusion? This urgent question is at the heart of a two-day regional conference organized by the ILO’s Bureau for Workers’ Activities (ACTRAV) in Brussels, running from 27 to 28 May 2025.

The event brings together representatives of trade unions, governments, employers, and academia from across Central and Western Europe, offering a critical platform to rethink and reshape the European social contract in response to the continent’s deepening economic, technological, and social shifts.

Focusing on macroeconomic policy, sustainable development, and technological change, the conference seeks to develop concrete proposals to support more inclusive and resilient labour markets.

“It is important to recall that over 14% of Europeans still live below the poverty line, and more than 10% of workers experience in-work poverty,” said Maria Helena André, Director of ACTRAV.
“Meanwhile, the return of fiscal austerity in several Member States threatens to erode our social models and weaken public services and social protection systems.
This debate is not only about identifying what’s not working—it’s about advancing practical, collective solutions to build a renewed European social contract that works for everyone.”

Participants will explore how strong social dialogue and the active involvement of independent and representative social partners are essential to ensuring fairer, more inclusive governance frameworks.

Ester Lynch, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), emphasized the central role of workers in shaping this renewed social contract:

“Inequality, economic injustice, and social exclusion are increasingly exploited by far-right movements to promote scapegoating and division. Collective bargaining remains a vital tool to ensure fair wages, decent working conditions, and meaningful worker participation. That’s why the ETUC is demanding a strong, renewed framework to strengthen collective bargaining across Europe—so that every worker, regardless of their job, contract, or country, is covered by a collective agreement. We must rebuild the social contract that emerged after the Second World War—rooted in solidarity, welfare, and the belief that everyone deserves security and dignity.”

This Brussels conference is part of a global ACTRAV initiative preparing trade union inputs for the Second World Summit for Social Development, to be held later in 2025.

About the new social contract

The world is undergoing a significant transformation, following increasing geo-political tensions, in part driven by changing patterns in globalisation, rapid technological change and the devastating impacts of climate crisis and environmental degradation. These changes are profoundly affecting the world of work, threatening sustainable economic development and social cohesion in many European countries. This has to some extent challenged the capacity of many governments to provide adequately for its people and to honour its social contract, given the fact that regulatory systems are at times lagging behind said fundamental challenges that affect our societies. 

In this context, the concept of a “new social contract” has emerged as a framework for rethinking the relationships between the state and its people. This new social contract aims to foster social progress and social justice, to ensure systematic inclusivity in every dimension of social and economic life, and to provide our economies and our societies with the necessary agility to adapt to a world undergoing rapid and profound changes. In this sense, any future social contract, should recognize the decisive role of the labour market, in particular of decent work, by ensuring employment priorities are aligned with economic, social and environmental priorities. This ensures that everyone can benefit from economic development through decent work, social protection, and a just share of the wealth they help to create regardless of the type of work or their employment status. It calls for a more inclusive and equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth, and for a strengthening of social dialogue and collective bargaining as means to achieve this.

For more information, please contact:

Sergeyus Glovackas,
Regional Desk Officer for Europe and Central Asia
Email: [email protected]

Mamadou Kaba SOUARE,
Head of Communications and Publications, ILO ACTRAV
Email: [email protected]