About

The ShaPE project examines the role social partners have played in treaty-making and law-making for social Europe. It advances proposals for revamping social Europe also revisiting fundamental values and social dialogue structures. To mark the conclusion of this important work and summarize the project’s key findings, we are organising a final event that will gather project partners, EU policy- and decision-makers, leading industry and academics in the field and more.

As the EU reflects on its future and the potential revision of its Treaties, this final event of the project will provide an important forum to discuss how social dialogue, and a renewed Social Europe can be placed at the heart of the European project. Launching a debate on the future of social Europe and social dialogue, ShaPE contributes with:

  • The newly created meta-archive and web portal with a public history mission for a new historically grounded account of the roles of social partners and other relevant actors in Treaty-making in the 1980s (the Single European Act) and early 1990s (Maastricht Treaty and Social Policy Agreement).
  • Presentation of Report “The Role of the EU in Shaping Worker Representation to Meet New Challenges and Reinforce Social Dialogue”.
  • Proposals to rebalance social, economic and sustainability requirements in the EU Treaties.

The event programme includes contributions from high-level speakers representing EU institutions, national and European social partners, and leading academics in the fields of labour law, European governance, and industrial relations.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Social Prerogative and Specific Competencies Lines programme under the grant agreement No 101126499.

 

Agenda

9:45 - 10:00

Opening speech by Brando Benifei, MEP, and Presentation of the SHAPE project by the project coordinator, Prof. Claire Kilpatrick.

10:00 - 10:30

Key-note speeches by high-level officials

Speakers (TBC):

  • Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament;
  • Roxana Mînzatu, Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, European Commission;
  • Silvana Sciarra, Former President of the Italian Constitutional Court; Professor Emerita of Labour Law, University of Florence (TBC)

10:30 - 10:45

Social Europe in the Archives – the road to Maastricht

Presented by Dieter Schlenker, Director of the Historical Archives of the European Union

10:45 - 11:30

Panel: Redesigning the social partners’ role and Social Europe for the future

Chairs Fausta Guarriello, Professor of Italian and European Labour Law at University of Chieti Pescara.

Panelists (TBC):

  • Esther Lynch, General Secretary at European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
  • Valeria Ronzitti, General Secretary of SGI Europe
  • Gabriele Bischoff, MEP, Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
  • Fabienne Keller, MEP, Renew
  • Dennis Radtke, MEP, Group of the European People’s Party
  • Bas Eickhout, MEP, Group of the Greens
  • Maarten Keune, Professor Social Security and Labour Relations at University of Amsterdam

SPEAKERS

Brando Benifei

Member of the European Parliament, Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats

Brando Benifei, European Federalist, is from La Spezia, Italy, and is the Head of Delegation of the Italian S&D MEPs.
His main areas of work are Internal Market and Consumers Protection, Employment and Social Affairs, and Constitutional Affairs. He is rapporteur for the Single Market Program and shadow rapporteur for the European Social Fund Plus. He is active on youth policies, digitalisation and rights of persons with disabilities.

Claire Kilpatrick

Professor of Law at the European University Institute

Claire Kilpatrick has been a Professor of Law at the EUI in Florence since June 2011, a Director of the Academy of European Law at the EUI since 2015 and was EUI Dean of Studies 2019-2022. Prior to coming to the EUI she worked at LSE, Cambridge University, Queen Mary University of London and Bristol University. Her interests lie mainly in the law and policy construction of Social Europe, especially the EU’s roles. She is the Principal Investigator of the ShaPE project.

Roxana Mînzatu

Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness, European Commission

Ms Mînzatu leads work to strengthen Europe’s human capital by advancing social rights, closing skills and labour gaps, ensuring quality jobs and fair transitions, promoting education and equality, supporting youth, tackling poverty, and fostering lifelong learning and workforce adaptability. She also guides the work to embed a new culture of preparedness to help people and societies adapt to change and to risks that exist in our society.

Silvana Sciarra

Former President of the Italian Constitutional Court; Professor Emerita of Labour Law, University of Florence

Silvana Sciarra, the first woman elected by Parliament as a Judge at the Italian Constitutional Court, began her mandate in November 2014, after having held the role of Full Professor of Labor Law and European Social Law at the University of Florence and the European University Institute. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Florence and Corresponding Member of the Accademia dei Lincei.

 

Dieter Schlenker

Director of the Historical Archives of the European Union

He is the Director of the Historical Archives of the European Union since January 2013. He is also Co-director of the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre on the History of European Integration at the European University Institute. Previously he worked for UNESCO, first at the Paris Headquarters as Records Management Specialist, then as Head of the Information and Knowledge Management Unit in the Regional Office for Asia and Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand. He is Associate Professor at the Alma Mater Europea University (AMEU) and regularly holds lectures in archival science and European integration history at the AMEU, the Archives School of the Florence State Archives, and the European College of Parma, Italy.

Fausta Guarriello

Professor of Italian and European Labour Law at University of Chieti Pescara

Fausta Guarriello is full professor of Labour Law, Industrial Relations and Transnational Labour Law at University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara. Former Head of the Department of Legal and Social Sciences, Jean Monnet Chair and Jean Monnet Chair ad personam, she has been an appointed professor in the Faculty of Law at University LUISS Guido Carli in Rome and in the Faculty of Political Sciences at University Sapienza of Rome. Specialist in the field of labour law and industrial relations, also in the comparative dimension, as well as in the EU employment law and antidiscrimination law.

Esther Lynch

General Secretary at European Trade Union Confederation

Esther Lynch is the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The first Irish General Secretary of the ETUC, she became a union representative when she worked in a micro-chip factory in the 1980s. She went on to work at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions for two decades, where she worked on the negotiation of Ireland’s national pay and social partnership agreements and the union response to the Troika’s attacks on wages and collective bargaining a decade ago. She joined the ETUC in 2015.

Valeria Ronzitti

General Secretary of SGI Europe

Valeria Ronzitti has been General Secretary of SGI Europe since 2012. She has been Vice-President of the European Movement International since November 2020. She is an active member of the REFIT Platform, where she represents the public services community, advising the Commission on how to make EU regulation more efficient and effective while reducing burdens and without undermining policy objectives. She is also a member of the High-level Task Force on Investment in Social Infrastructure.

 

Gabriele Bischof

MEP, Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats

Ms. Bischoff worked at Germany’s largest trade union, IG Metall, from 1991 until 2000. She was advisor on social affairs at the Permanent Representation of Germany to the EU in Brussels from 2000 to 2005 and then worked at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) in Berlin as special advisor from 2006 to 2008. She then worked for the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) in Berlin, where she led the trade union’s work on European policies. In that role, she was a member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in Brussels from 2009 until 2019 when she was elected to the European Parliament.

 

Fabienne Keller

MEP, Renew

Fabienne Keller is a graduate of Polytechnique and the University of Berkeley. She became involved in politics in 1998 and was elected Mayor of Strasbourg (France) from 2001 to 2008. Since May 2019, she is a French Member of the European Parliament. As member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), she worked actively on the reform of the Asylum and Migration Pact. She was Rapporteur of the Parliament on the Asylum Procedure Regulation and on the Return Border Procedure. She was also Shadow Rapporteur on the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation.

Dennis Radtke

MEP, Group of the European People’s Party

Dennis Radtke became a member of the European Parliament for the CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) in 2017. He is a member of the Committee for Employment and Social Affairs and a deputy member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. Since July 2019, he has been coordinator of the European People’s Party (EPP) for the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Employees’ Association and is deputy district chairman of the CDU Ruhr. In March 2023 Dennis Radtke was elected President of the European Union of Christian Democratic Workers (EUCDW).

Bas Eickhout

MEP, Group of the Greens

Bas Eickhout worked as an environmental researcher before becoming active in GreenLeft during the 1990s. In 2009, he was elected to the European Parliament for the Dutch Green party GroenLinks. He stands for climate protection and democratic values. His expertise as an environmental scientist has been instrumental in shaping legislation, earning him a reputation as a knowledgeable and effective advocate for ecological issues.

Maarten Keune

Professor Social Security and Labour Relations at University of Amsterdam

Maarten Keune is professor in social security and labour relations at the University of Amsterdam. Previously he was Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS). He has held various positions at the International Labour Organisation and the European Trade Union Institute and has published widely on industrial relations, labour market and welfare state developments, and European integration. He holds a PhD in political and social sciences from the European University Institute in Florence.

 

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