Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-273"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the communication being debated today is based on the evaluation by the Commission and the Member States of five years of the employment strategy in practice. The results are important and I should like to reiterate a number of them.
As you know, the official proposal on the 2003 guidelines on employment will be submitted next April, together with the proposal on the general economic policy guidelines. In the interim, there is time enough for everyone to take part in this procedure and express their opinion. In order to broaden and facilitate this debate, the Commission intends to publish a further communication in January which, as far as the timing of specific proposals is concerned, will come halfway between the communications already approved and the proposal for the 2003 guidelines. This means we shall have two-and-a-half months in which to conduct an in-depth debate.
We eagerly await your proposals and, if we draw on experience from the past five years, we shall be able to improve the employment strategy dramatically.
Ten million jobs have been created in Europe, as the result both of economic growth in previous years and efficient reforms on numerous job markets. We have seen important structural changes in most Member States, qualitative changes in employment policies and numerous countries have made progress in energising the job market, preventing long-term unemployment, introducing the most employment-friendly tax systems yet, gradually adapting education and training systems and introducing more flexible labour standards.
What is important about the employment strategy is that the driving force behind it was the management of basic objectives. The Member States had common objectives and used the open method of coordination. Much still remains to be done and this is set out every year in the Commission's common report and guidelines. Your motion contains some very interesting ideas on how we need to proceed and we need to draw on what we have learned to date so that we can make a number of changes.
I fully endorse the three priorities which you have set: first, the need to increase the rate of employment in relation to the Lisbon objectives, secondly, the question of the quality of work and, thirdly, the need to reduce inequalities on the job market, and here I would highlight the question of inequalities at numerous levels, the gaps on the job market, be they skills gaps, inequalities at regional level or inequalities between the two sexes. As far as inequalities between the Member States and the new countries after enlargement are concerned, I disagree with the proposal in the explanatory statement that we should operate with two parallel strategies. We need a single strategy and common objectives, although naturally we shall use national recommendations to differentiate our message and accommodate the peculiarities of each country.
The European Parliament and the Commission also appear to agree on the need to rationalise the procedure. One important priority is to ensure the strategy continues to be efficient and discriminating. The philosophy we propose is fewer guidelines and a stronger medium-term strategy, more stable guidelines; to put it simply, fewer guidelines which are valid for a longer period of time.
Again, one question which arises when we talk of updating is the scope of future guidelines. What will their scope be? Will they relate specifically to the job market or more globally to all the basic factors which influence employment policies? We take the view that they should have a broad scope which covers the main factors which influence the level and quality of employment in our economy.
As far as the management model, the method used to manage and administer the employment strategy is concerned, I totally agree that we need to incorporate the employment strategy at all levels of national planning. We have seen interesting examples of regional and local employment strategies over the past 5 years, local action plans on employment have been submitted, and this was a successful initiative. The commitment and contribution of the two sides of industry is very important. Of course, our initial evaluation is that not every means of involving them has been exhausted and that important efforts are needed. And as far as the involvement of civil society is concerned, it is still early days as regards any decisive involvement of civil society in employment policies.
I agree that the national parliaments have a vital role to play. The parliamentary Committee on Employment and Social Affairs has already organised events with national parliaments on exchanging experience and information and we believe that this should continue but that, in future proposals, starting with the debate in the Convention, the national parliaments should play a more important part in national action plans and the European Parliament should play a more important part in the European procedure.
My last comment has to do with bringing the European Employment Strategy into line with the general economic policy guidelines, as proposed in our communication of 3 September. We hope that, in adopting this proposal, which I presented to Parliament the day it was adopted, we will achieve greater cohesion between the two strategies, without calling the independence of the employment strategy in question. The purpose of the communication taking stock of the strategy, together with the communication on rationalisation, is to start an open debate on the future of the European employment strategy. After five years in practice, I think that your report has made a valuable contribution and that the Council will do likewise at its meeting on 8 October, when one of the basic issues of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs will be the debate on the evaluation and the future of the employment strategy."@en1
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