Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-13-Speech-1-038"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20000313.2.1-038"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, Mr Guterres, Mr Prodi, ladies and gentlemen, it is pleasing to hear the Commission and the Portuguese Presidency declaring full employment to be an aim of European policy. I agree that this should be so, but to be successful in the future a model of full employment requires, above all, professional and socially secure jobs. We need to structure the economy and the world of work in such a way that gainful employment becomes worthwhile. You are relying mainly on further deregulation in the internal market, on the Internet revolution and on e-commerce and e-business to be job machines. This policy will not allow you to keep your promise of full employment. Economic reforms such as the liberalisation of the internal energy market have led to stiff competition and numerous mergers. This has cost jobs and the trend is continuing. As early as the mid-nineties, Mr Bangemann promised a huge increase in jobs due to the information society. The result is sobering. The growth in media, mobile radio communication and software was not able to compensate for the job losses in the telecommunications sector and in the electronics industry, and for the rationalisation resulting from the introduction of information technology in other sectors of the economy. When I see that many companies engaged in e-commerce admittedly have huge market capitalisation, but that their actual business is constantly making losses, this does not necessarily make me feel any more optimistic. E-commerce and e-business certainly have a great future. But their contribution to employment growth is overstated almost religiously by their proponents. That is why I believe that we need a different policy mix for a new policy of full employment. That means, firstly, greater easing of monetary policy, a budgetary policy designed to strengthen investment in expansion and in the future, and a wages policy geared to productivity, so as to stimulate internal European demand and generate more jobs. Secondly, it means a strategy to make drastic cuts in working time and redistribute work between men and women. Thirdly, it means more state support for employment in ecologically sound sectors of the economy and a suitably future-oriented innovation policy linked in particular to boosting small and medium-sized enterprises. Fourthly, this is about an emancipatory labour market policy. This entails rejecting low-wage-sector strategies and work requirement models for unskilled jobs, because only a broad-based training initiative will allow us to produce a sufficient pool of qualified workers for the knowledge society, and to deliver environmentally efficient, social and cultural services. If we do not go down this path then we will undermine our future prosperity, our competitiveness, our economic productivity and the social cohesion of society."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph