Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-28-Speech-3-037"
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"en.20011128.4.3-037"2
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"Mr President, the Lisbon European Council and the socio-political agenda adopted by the European Council at Nice bring us into a new phase of policy on social affairs and employment in the European Union. As we have heard from the President-in-Office of the Council and from the President of the Commission, interest is now focussed on the quality of work and of social affairs policy. We in this Parliament want to be fully involved in this development. We – by which I mean the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, whose Chairman, Michel Rocard, I represent – are therefore putting an oral question to the Council and Commission, coupled with a motion for a resolution.
It is our conviction that secure jobs, favourable working conditions and appropriate workers' rights do not diminish productivity and economic growth and hence the creation of jobs, but, on the contrary, promote them. Work for all is the objective. We want a strategy for more and better jobs. Quality of work involves job satisfaction, which improves employees' motivation, and health and safety at work improve as well. We are looking to the Commission to produce a proposal on the status of temporary workers. Moreover, quality of work involves equal treatment of both sexes, the reconciliation of work and family life, and measures to keep older people in the job market.
For this we need the most modern forms of vocational education. There is a need for further education, in-service training and lifelong learning. The adaptability of enterprises and their capacity to deal with structural change will be particularly important in creating new and better jobs, and minimum standards across Europe are needed to ensure that employees are involved in this, informed and consulted in due time, and thereby enabled to adjust to change.
In comparison with our economic counterparts, for example, the United States, Europe suffers from a low employment rate. The Lisbon European Council recognised that this was a problem and proposed an ambitious objective for progressively increasing this rate. It is absolutely vital that we achieve this objective. The Commission has presented a communication in preparation for the Laeken Summit, in which it sets down the outlines of a strategy for promoting quality of work and social affairs policy. The drawing-up of appropriate indicators and criteria, as Mr Prodi informed us, is not the least important of these, but is primary.
As I said at the outset, Parliament expects to be fully involved in discussions. It is our ever more frequent experience that European social affairs policy is carried on by dialogue between sub-committees of the Council – for example the Employment Committee or the Social Protection Committee – and the Commission. Parliament is often left out in the cold. We protest against this. Parliament must be able to play its rightful part in formulating proposals on subjects such as employment and social protection which, after all, are of immediate concern to all citizens. If we are to do this, the relevant specialised fora and the Commission have to keep us up to date with the work they are doing, and Parliament has to be consulted in good time before every European Council. We expect a clear pledge on this from the Laeken summit. We are, at the end of the day, the representatives of the people and therefore, in essence, the primary organ of the European Union.
President Prodi just used a very fine expression in describing Parliament as the most important expression of democratic Europe. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President, it is for these reasons that we look forward to your answers to our oral questions."@en1
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