Les rencontres

“The individual and the collective at the heart of new forms of solidarity”

Our social security systems and supplementary social protection schemes evolved concurrently with the emergence of solidarity among professionals. This was initially local, and was later set in a more universal framework. Today, these historical schemes, which are the heritage of either Bismarck or Beveridge, combine and interact with each other to varying degrees in the social protection plans of member States. Both of these systems are founded on collective solidarity providing partial or full health or unemployment coverage to some or all groups.

The recent crises have made us appreciate even more than before the ability of collective tools such as social security and supplementary solidary social protection organisations to limit social and economic impacts.
Nevertheless, in an unstable economic climate rife with uncertainties and when public spending is being cut to decrease budgetary deficits, the wave of austerity measures are paradoxically targeting social welfare schemes.

What’s more, as spending cuts exert greater pressure on the individual, the risks of an aging population and the evolution of new life styles (namely, dependency), which should be borne by collective responsibility, need to be addressed.

Solidary social protection should improve the way benefits and services cater to individual needs. Ipse agrees with this acknowledgement made by the International Social Security Association (ISSA). It is important that solidary organisations take this into consideration. Indeed, the temptation to merchandise services, under the pretence of offering personalised packages or à la carte options, could exacerbate inequalities and create exclusions.

The four work sessions of this XXXVIIth Meeting will address this theme through the following issues:

1) Changes in feeling a sense of belonging to a group, a collective
2) Solidarity: a method, a founding principle of collective and individual social protection.
3) What criteria are applied to individual persons to ensure the continuity of solidary social protection?
4) The individual, the general interest: What actions have mutual insurances, insurance cooperatives and paritarian institutions undertaken?
The first session will focus on society’s evolution and the modes of working with respect to the collective body. Does a sense of belonging to a group or a profession still exist? Is there a bond that motivates us to create or share professional or geographical solidarity?

Next, the second session will develop the theme of solidarity, a core value of social protection, but it is a condition for a certain form of organisation or obligation. Solidarity does indeed rely on systems that combine the larger whole and the individual. Are these two approaches contradictory?

The third session will explore the possible and necessary adaptations of basic as well as supplementary social protection so that solidarity can endure within systems. What is the next step for social protection as a whole, in healthcare and in retirement so that the individual is better taken into account?

Last but not least, the fourth session will look into how mutual insurances, insurance cooperatives and paritarian institutions can work together to best ensure the continuity of solidarity and offer services to individuals while simultaneously guaranteeing collective interests.

Cooperating for the advancement of not-for-profit social protection

The 34th IPSE Meeting, which was held on August 31 and September 1, 2009 in Stockholm, was based on the observation that social protection was effectively absorbing social shock during the crises. There, several speakers and participants candidly expressed the desire to overcome the determined independence too often shown by families of social protection systems based on solidarity.
Tangible cooperation between different types of not-for-profit complementary social protection (mutual, cooperative, mutualist, and paritarian institutions…) could be the force needed to make their specificity, competitiveness, and goal of solidarity recognized in European law.