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The Spanish Economic and Social Council (ESC) welcomes and shares the aims of the draft bill on combating illegal employment and benefit fraud, but considers that the provisions and measures included in the bill are not best suited to achieving the aims pursued. Accordingly it cannot take a positive view of it, as set out in the Opinion adopted by the Plenary Council.The Opinion notes that some of the measures provided in the draft bill are insufficient, generic or equivocal, and they seem in some cases to have a merely technical or revenue-raising function. The Council notes that in order to ascertain the extent of illegal employment and benefit fraud it would have been advisable to first conduct an assessment of the situation. It also considers that there is a need to assess the coherence of all policies aimed at combating the black economy, of which initiatives against illegal employment and benefit fraud are a major part.Generally speaking, the Council regards the measures included in the draft bill as, in many cases, unsuitable, and insufficient for their purpose as a whole. The Opinion states that the bill is unlikely to lead to fraud and illegal employment being combated more effectively, and so the proposed measures cannot be rated positively. The Opinion highlights the Council’s doubts about counting applications for benefits or jobseeker’s allowance as serious offences. The Council believes it is mistaken to treat such acts as punishable, for they are a matter not of fraud but of incompatibility, and making an improper application and improperly receiving benefits cannot be punished with equal severity. With regard to additional penalties for employers and specific employers’ liabilities, the text of the bill should provide sufficient and appropriate criteria for guiding civil servants proposing penalties in the context of the principles underlying the penalty system. These criteria, the Opinion states, should allow for the application of the principle of proportionality in the scaling of penalties, ensure that committing an offence will not be more beneficial for the offender than complying with the law, and make administrative liability for the commission of the serious offences referred to in the provisions compatible with the reimbursement, if applicable, of improperly obtained amounts.

High quality public services demand much more than minimum compliance with rules and regulations. For human services, such as eldercare and disability, we need to use regulation and standards that focus on performance and outcomes.

In its final report, the Social and Economic Council's International Corporate Social Responsibility Committee (ICSR) observes that ICSR and sustainability have been added to the agendas of many enterprises and industries in recent years. Businesses are making a real effort in this area, and ICSR is consequently functioning as a driver for new products and markets.