EU EPSCO Coordination

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment leads and co-ordinates Ireland’s participation in the employment, equality and social policy elements of the EU’s Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council.

The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) is one of the ten current EU Council of Ministers formations.

The EPSCO Council brings together Ministers with responsibility for employment, social affairs, health and consumer policy from all EU member states. Relevant European Commissioners also participate in meetings.

There are usually four EPSCO meetings a year in Brussels and Luxembourg along with two informal meetings in the country of the current EU presidency.

Whilst this department takes the lead role in this Council, given the cross-cutting issues involved, a number of other departments also provide inputs to the Council. This department co-ordinates, prepares and develops policy inputs for EPSCO on a range of issues including:

• European Semester
• European Pillar of Social Rights
• Employment, social and equality issues, for example, EU employment guidelines, gender pay gap, Child Guarantee, coordination of social security systems, European Skills Agenda.