Luxembourg Represented at OECD Social Policy Ministerial Meeting

On Friday 14 February 2025, Luxembourg's Minister of Health and Social Security, Martine Deprez, participated in the Social Policy Ministerial Meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France; the meeting was titled "New Frontiers for Social Policy: Investing in the Future".

As reported by Luxembourg's Ministry of Health and Social Security, the discussions, held under the Portuguese and Spanish Presidency, focused on current issues and the future of social protection systems to respond to societal changes in the face of a scarcity of resources.

Minister Deprez joined the discussions which focused on the importance of social investments in a spirit of transversality, requiring a holistic approach in the implementation of social policies. According to most speakers, emphasis should be placed on setting up networks that prevent life risks from leading to distress situations requiring expenditure that could be avoided by more efficient upstream measures. The concept of "Prevention is better than cure" was thus deemed not exclusively valid in the health sector, but can be extended to all efforts to ensure the sustainability of social security systems.

The ministry added that many countries stressed the demographic challenges that old-age insurance systems will face in particular (but also all branches of social security) and reported on their respective efforts to address them.