Brenda King
The plenary session is over. A large number of opinions were adopted and it’s always invidious (and dangerous for an SG!) to start singling out any particular opinion for special note, but here goes – just one or two to give a taste. One exploratory opinion (which means that the Swedish Presidency asked the Committee to draft it), on social inclusion (rapporteur: Brenda King, Employers’ Group, UK), was closely linked to the previous debate on the Lisbon Strategy. The words still ring in my ears of a Finnish colleague who pointed out that some victims of economic crises – the poor, the old, the low-skilled – can easily become permanent victims, who never manage to join the productive economy again. the opinion quite rightly argues that we must be particularly attentive to this risk.
Joao Pegado Liz
Another, own-initiative opinion (which means that the Committee itself decided that it should draw attention to a particular issue) on the impact of social networking sites on citizens and consumers (rapporteur: Joao Pegado Liz, Various Interests Group, Portugese) coined a new term or, at least, new to me; ‘poor digital literacy’. This closely-argued and well-documented opinion demonstrates just how inadvertently vulnerable we can all be to exploitation of various networking sites; it’s not just those who are poor in digital literacy, though they are of course most at risk.
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