Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-04-Speech-4-043"
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"en.19991104.4.4-043"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I believe that it is intelligent and necessary to begin this brief contribution to the debate on employment guidelines by congratulating ourselves on the positive European statistics and I would like to show my appreciation for the work of all those who have worked so intelligently so that we may finally have a procedure for coordination in the field of employment, as provided for in article 128 of the Treaty of Amsterdam.
But, at the same time, I hope not only to express satisfaction but also concern, because the project and the procedure, in my view, are ambiguous. Together with the clear fact that it is very important that the Union has, as one of its objectives, a high level of employment and social protection, we can see that the data shows that there is still an enormous gap between the support given and the needs of those people whose families and themselves personally suffer from the scourge of unemployment.
And I would describe this procedure as insufficient, not because it is naïve to believe that it is easy to carry out, nor because it is puerile to ask the Commission and the Council to achieve objectives which are beyond their capabilities. I believe that it is insufficient because we are still treating the problem as if it were a current problem when, in reality, Europe is suffering from a structural problem of an historic nature, born of a change in production methods, born of an increase in productivity in work which leads to increases in production and wealth which do not result in increases in employment and that this increase in wealth is distributed amongst companies and the workers who are in work, leaving those in a worse situation out of the picture: women, unqualified young people and the long-term unemployed. To sum up, it is because we continue basically to believe that the market will resolve a problem which cannot be resolved by the market because it is not a current problem, but rather a problem caused by our model of society.
And I would like to take advantage of the few seconds remaining to say to the Commissioner – while thanking her for being here – that she should keep an eye on the figures provided by the Governments, firstly, to ensure that those figures are accurate and, secondly, so that they do not continue to provide data on active policies which are actually figures arising from taxes on employment and social welfare contributions. We see, although we do not have time to illustrate it, that in the Governments’ reports, figures are given on new initiatives on active policies, but they are being financed through taxes on employment and social welfare contributions. I therefore think that the Commission should be more diligent so that, so to speak, “they do not have the wool pulled over their eyes” and let us see whether, finally, in the year 2000, we may have criteria and levels to measure our objectives, our means and our results in terms of quality rather than just quantity. Only in this way will European employment strategy be more than just propaganda in some of our countries."@en1
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