Finance human development through public resources

Taxation

• All European national governments should constructively engage with the UN tax reform process toward an equitable and inclusive global tax architecture. They should contribute to the establishment of the new UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, in accordance with the General Assembly Resolution on the promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation. The EU should support reducing illicit financial flows, a significantly increased global minimum corporate income tax rate, a fair division of taxing rights on corporations between nation states and a global minimum taxation standard for the wealthiest, responding to overwhelming public support for this proposal and to the call of the G20 Brazilian Presidency.
• The EU and all European national governments should raise taxes on the super-rich through, for example, wealth taxes at national level or EU level.
• EU Member States should implement a full Public Country by Country Reporting, in line with the EU Public Country by Country Reporting Directive, requiring companies to publish how much tax they pay in every country they operate.

Debt justice

• All European national governments should take the lead in ending unsustainable, and illegitimate and unfair debt of low- and middle-income countries, considering that (together with the United States and Japan), European countries dominate the governance and agenda-setting of the IMF and the World Bank.
• All European national governments should be supportive of finance institutions providing debt resolution, including cancellation, free of harmful conditionalities (which can prevent investments in public services and climate measures). Such process of debt resolution must always go hand in hand with initiatives and mechanisms in debtor countries for good governance and civil society engagement, so that available financing is used for the common good and that its use is well monitored.
• All European national governments should support the development of a debt resolution framework at UN level to address the need for more democratic, inclusive and transparent global debt governance, moving global debt governance away from creditor-dominated groups, such as the G20 and the G7, and ensuring public scrutiny.

Development assistance

• Official Development Assistance (ODA) is another precious tool to support those left furthest behind. The EU and all European national governments should live up to their commitments to dedicate 0.7% of their Gross National Income to development cooperation, and they should use this aid in a genuine and effective way.

Promote a new vision of work and recognise the value of all types of work

• All European national governments should better recognise the value of all types of “work”. This is particularly important for care work, paid and unpaid. Care work is a central component of the economy and should be recognised as such through decent wages, access to social benefits and quality job training. They should also recognise the diversity of workplaces – work is performed in households, communities, cooperatives, associations, small-scale subsistence agriculture etc. Many of these types of work are essential and do not need nor entail accumulation, commodification, endless consumption and production.
• All European national governments should facilitate discussions on working time reduction (collectively agreed reduction of time spent in employment) at national and local levels. Working time reduction can offer a triple dividend to society: reduced involuntary unemployment, increased quality of life and reduced environmental pressures. Working time reduction means we can share employment more evenly, so that those who are currently overworked can work less, and those facing unemployment and want to participate in paid work can do so. Sharing employment more evenly could also enable more women to participate in the labour market. It means that we can reduce the burden of overwork and stress, it means people would have more time for other forms of work such as volunteering, political participation, and community engagement, as well as leisure and wellbeing, the pursuit of hobbies, and exercise. It also means that people would have the opportunity to engage in “less energy-intensive but more time-consuming consumption patterns”, such as cooking meals instead of buying pre-cooked ones, repairing clothes instead of throwing away and buying new and caring instead of outsourcing the care. Working time reduction policies should ensure that wages remain the same or at least that workers’ quality of life remains the same. In an economy that no longer chases growth, the same level of output will no longer be needed, and where public wealth is shared (see recommendations above) and unemployment benefits are less in demand, we can work reduced hours without lowering our quality of life.
• Building on the current pilot initiative scaling up existing job guarantee projects, the European Commission should propose an EU-wide job guarantee in the form of a Directive. A job guarantee is a state-funded locally implemented project that provides a decent job for anyone willing and able to work in order to reduce involuntary, long-term unemployment with the state as the employer of last resort. A Directive would ensure the job guarantee’s availability in all Member States, but leave sufficient room for governments to adapt it according to the structure of their national labour market systems. It could be funded through the European Social Fund+. An EU job guarantee could help deliver services such as childcare, elderly care, preschool education, community gardens, community libraries, maintenance of green spaces, etc.
• All European national governments, for those countries with statutory minimum wages, should ensure that they are set at an adequate level, at least in line with the EU Adequate Minimum Wages Directive (adhering to the international indicator of 60% gross median wage and 50% gross average wage). These levels should be revised annually, in consideration of national living costs, for the purpose of tackling in-work poverty. Statutory minimum wages should cover all types of workers.
• The European Commission should build on the Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed and propose a Directive on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Social protection should be extended to all workers, no matter the type of employment or length of contract.

Ensure corporate accountability and promote sustainable and inclusive business models

• In line with the European Parliament’s position, the European Commission should propose an EU mandate to allow the EU to enter negotiations on a binding UN instrument for business and human rights. The Council of the EU should then actively support the development and implementation of this instrument, one that goes beyond due diligence obligations established in the European Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and that ensures effective mechanisms for accountability that counter corporate “green washing” and provide access to justice and remedies for victims of abuse.
• In the transposition phase of the European Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, EU Member States should use their discretion and the directive’s room for flexibility to adopt more ambitious requirements for corporate accountability than the ones established in the Directive, responding to civil society demands and enabling better alignment with international standards where this is lacking. This includes considering: expanding the reach of the directive to cover the entire value chain and include all sectors and more companies, strengthening access to justice by reversing the burden of proof to make it easier for victims to hold corporations accountable and ensuring robust enforcement by allocating adequate resources to investigate corporate misconduct and impose meaningful sanctions.
• EU Member States should fully implement the Social Economy Action Plan and the Council Recommendation on developing social economy framework conditions at national level to support social economy actors. In doing so, they should adopt legislation and national strategies promoting social entrepreneurship and prioritise criteria and procedures to ease the registration and accreditation of social enterprises. They should provide financial support and an appropriate legal framework for social enterprises through grant schemes, subsidies for remuneration of employees, affordable and guaranteed interest-free loans, and tax relief.
• In line with the UN resolution on the social and solidarity economy, all European national governments should support and promote the social economy globally: strongly rely on actors that go beyond “causing no harm”, that foster community-led and human rights-based development and that are driven by the mission of contributing to the common good. This includes putting the external dimension of the Social Economy Action Plan as a priority for the European Commission International Partnerships Directorate and in the cooperation with the African Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Reform international finance institutions for democratic, accountable and effective global economic governance

All European national governments should take a proactive and constructive role in the reform of international finance institutions’ governance so as to:

• End the outdated agreement that heads of the IMF and World Bank are always from Europe and the US respectively.
• Update IMF quota formulas to reflect the changing global landscape.
• Re-allocate voting rights within the IMF and World Bank to better represent the balance of people and power in the world in the 21^st. 
• End harmful conditionalities that can trap countries in poverty and prevent investment in public services and climate measures.

Recognise, support and amplify other ways of defining progress and development

• The EU and all European national governments should acknowledge and challenge the legacies of racism and colonialism and the imbalance of power in the “development sector”. This should be the basis for negotiations on joint commitments under the framework of the EU’s partnership with the African Union and with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as well as in multilateral processes (e.g. by supporting other regions’ priorities regarding debt cancellation, climate financing and the reform of the international finance institutions).
• The EU and all European national governments should re-orient “development cooperation” so that it supports and amplifies transformative initiatives within social movements, in local communities and in indigenous cultures that focus on the wellbeing of people and of our common home. This does not require discarding all the methods, tools and practices originating in Europe or in the mainstream model of “development cooperation”, but dislocating the powerful position they hold and reconfiguring them with “othered” “marginalised” knowledge and ways of being. For example, the EU and European national governments should progressively redirect existing investments from industrial agriculture to agroecology in Europe and in partner countries.
• The EU and all European national governments should increase direct humanitarian and development funding to local grassroots civil society organisations, paying particular attention to the overhead costs borne by these actors, provide flexible and adaptable funding and reduce administrative and reporting requirements. This will enable local civil society organisations to hold power and access resources to respond effectively to the needs and aspirations of their communities and to decide on and move toward their own vision of a good life. This is key for the EU and its Member States to respond to the OECD DAC Recommendation on Enabling OECD Legal Instruments Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance as well as to recommendations put forward by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to development.
• The EU and all European national governments should support the adoption of the draft UN International Covenant on the Right to Development.