Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-067"
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"en.20011023.4.2-067"2
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".
Mr President, this is the fourth public debate in the European Parliament on the Employment Strategy. The Employment Strategy is just one part of the European debate, but this is the first time there has been a general downturn in the economy, the first time there has been anxiety and, however much we want to avoid creating fear or panic, the situation is clearly going to be more difficult and problems with employment and economic development are bound to appear at the beginning of next year.
Honourable Members, we are planning to submit a revised proposal to the Council over coming weeks which takes account of these questions. I should like to offer you my warmest thanks because the open and highly interesting debate on the guidelines in Parliament has enhanced the substance and role of the strategy for employment in European policy in general.
Several honourable Members have raised the question of the Lisbon target, that is, is it feasible and is the proposal in question an adequate proposal now that circumstances have changed? It is true that the analyses underlying our proposed guidelines are based on the excellent results for 2000, which possibly painted the most positive picture of employment and job creation in Europe in the last twenty years.
The situation is different now, however. Can we continue within the same framework? Can we continue with the same approach to the employment strategy? Mr Schmid put this question very clearly. I think that we should start from the following premise: thanks to the reforms introduced on the job market over recent years, the common, healthy, budgetary base in the Member States and the efforts made to achieve monetary union, the European Union is better placed than ever before to cope with a recession. Let me just remind you of previous recessions, which were exacerbated to a frightening degree by differences and fluctuations between currencies within the Union. So today, we are better, much better placed to cope with a recession.
The second point is that, obviously, if serious problems arise in the future, we have tools to deal with them in the form of monetary policy and interest rates, in the form of economic policy and the margins allowed within the Stability Pact. But what is important is for us to maintain the employment strategy without chopping and changing. It is important for us not to make short-term changes, but to keep to our objective and step up the implementation of the employment strategy. It would be a huge reversal at this stage if the Member States failed to focus their energies on efforts to apply the employment strategy as agreed.
There are very specific policies which the Member States need to develop in relation to the targets for employment quotas, the need to incorporate policies on the quality of work, better management of change, especially corporate restructuring, investments in human resources and policies on equal opportunities, where, it has to be said, the results of our evaluation in the joint report on employment were fairly disappointing. The Member States have not put enough emphasis on policies for equal opportunities.
No major changes have been made in the proposed guidelines, first, because we made changes last year, taking account of the message from Lisbon, and because we are currently in the process of a more general evaluation. The changes which we propose include three basic factors. The first is the need for national targets. The Member States need to set national employment targets. The second is the need for policies on the quality of work, and the third deals with the widening wage differential between the sexes. Unfortunately, there is still a huge discrepancy, as much as 15%, between men's and women's wages for the same work.
As far as the European Parliament resolution is concerned, I should like in particular to thank Mrs Weiler for her very serious approach and to point out that your reference to the question of rationalising procedures, to cohesiveness between individual procedures in the European Union is something we fully endorse – we are planning to move on to a new framework for the package next year – and that we agree with you wholeheartedly on the need for cohesion between the general economic policy guidelines and guidelines for employment. I would refer again here to the agreement between Parliament and the Commission and the view taken by the Council that labour issues should be dealt with within the framework of the guidelines for employment and that the guidelines for employment should be policies which are absolutely distinct from the economic guidelines.
There are numerous points on which there is consensus and agreement. There is the question of the social partners and their role, there is the question of flexibility and security on the job market and, to reply to Mrs Van Lancker, may I say that the Commission is determined to submit a proposal for a directive by the end of the year, due to the lack of success of the social partners. This proposal is being prepared as we speak. There is a common view on the need to work with the candidate countries, so that they can incorporate the strategies for employment, and to step up policies on sexual equality.
Your text contains proposals for changes to the guidelines. The European Commission will examine a good number of them. Certain particularly important points to which I should like to refer are: the lack of adequate information on the financial means available to the Member States in order to apply the strategy; the need for a framework between the social partners and the Member States for applying lifelong learning to companies; the need to combine the objective of promoting mobility with reductions in regional inequalities and for stronger measures to combat illegal employment – this links up with the issue of immigration to which Mrs Weiler referred in her personal presentation – and the need to deal with specific entry barriers to women on the job market."@en1
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