Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-011"
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". Mr President, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate on behalf of the Commission and, above all, on behalf of Mrs Diamantopoulou, who regrets that she cannot be here today because she is attending a meeting of the Social Affairs Council in Luxembourg.
I now turn to the new priorities. I am not going to refer to all the specific guidelines, but I would like to refer to the three main challenges they address.
Firstly, the adaptability of people and enterprises must be promoted. Adaptability requires a good balance between flexibility and security in the labour market. It also requires investment in entrepreneurship and in helping people and enterprises to cope better with the effects of economic restructuring.
Secondly, in order to achieve full employment, we must see how we can increase the labour supply further. We must better exploit the potential of all groups of the population. We must increase the participation of women and older workers on the labour market. We must fully integrate immigrants into the labour market. We must transform undeclared work into regular employment. Parliament's support was extremely important in securing an agreement on this specific issue. We now send out a clear signal that we want not just more employment but also better employment.
Thirdly, investment in human capital is increasingly at the heart of the issue of creating more and better jobs. It is crucial for more employment, more productivity and also more inclusion. This calls for redirecting resources in favour of investment in human capital.
Let me now address the views of this Parliament. I regret the timetable difficulties which Parliament has had to face. I understand your concerns and I know that both the Council and the Commission have done their utmost to take account of your views. Despite those difficulties, the revised guidelines I am presenting today strongly reflect the views of Parliament. Indeed, your views have provided significant added value in a number of notable areas.
First of all, a reference to reducing unemployment. Parliament fought hard to include a reference on the need to reduce unemployment. I agree that it is vital to illustrate to Europe's citizens that these reforms aim to tackle directly the areas of most concern to them. I am happy to report that we now have such a reference in the opening paragraphs of the guidelines, even though Parliament's request went further in suggesting a new target relating to full employment.
The second area concerned is that of a fourth over-arching objective on equal opportunities. As a result of Parliament's opinion we now have a stronger set of guidelines giving a higher profile to gender issues. The revised text does not go as far as including a fourth over-arching objective, but in two important areas the guidelines have been strengthened: firstly, the introductory text makes it clear that equal opportunities and gender equality are vital for making progress towards all three objectives; secondly, we now have a more complete specific guideline addressing gender equality as such.
Concerning a higher profile for the entrepreneurship priority, the Commission very much welcomes Parliament's comments that the scope of the entrepreneurship guidelines should be widened to cover support for all SMEs, rather than just new start-ups. This proposal has been taken on board.
As regards a more visible role for local and regional actors, the new proposals better reflect the importance of ensuring the close involvement of local and regional actors in the employment strategy.
In line with Parliament's request, we now have a specific guideline on regional disparities that recognises the crucial role played by local and regional actors in addressing those disparities.
We have now reached the final stage in our joint effort to reform the European employment strategy. All the institutions have worked together to reach a good compromise that is now fully in line with the European Council's conclusions, that takes on board most of the European Parliament's views and that is, whilst less ambitious, close to the Commission's initial proposal.
The discussions on governance were rather difficult. It is obvious that this is a very sensitive issue for Member States. However, it is important to stress that the success of the new European employment strategy ultimately relies on improved delivery and better governance. This is even more vital when we account for the needs of the new Member States, who have openly recognised the crucial importance of the issue. This is yet another area in which we very much welcome the strong support of the Parliament. The guidelines now clearly express the important contribution of parliamentary bodies for improving the governance of the employment strategy. Despite the fact that this falls short of your proposal that national parliaments should adopt the national action plans, it does however reflect important progress in ensuring a better governance strategy.
I believe that in taking on board many of your expectations, these revisions now reflect the shared views of all parties. The revised guidelines present concrete objectives, priorities and targets and strengthen the delivery and governance of the strategy as a whole. As such, they are an excellent basis to support national employment and labour market policies for the years ahead.
Our ambitions should reflect the scale of the challenges we face. Firstly, full employment: to deliver full employment we need to create up to 22 million jobs if the Union of 25 Member States is to reach the 2010 Lisbon target.
As far as quality and productivity is concerned, this means ensuring not just more jobs but also better jobs. We must take a positive approach to managing economic restructuring and we must reverse the slowdown in productivity growth.
As regards cohesion and inclusion, we must tackle increasing social inequalities and persistent regional disparities. This, of course, will be an even more challenging ambition within an enlarged Union. These challenges can only be met if we ensure that all relevant players are closely involved in the employment strategy and that they all work together.
What are the main elements of reform? Firstly, stability. Through this reform we have to respond to the short-term challenges of the slowdown in our economies, and face up to the longer-term challenges of reform. A more stable set of guidelines covering the period up to 2010, with a mid-term review in 2006, should help us to respond to both short- and longer-term challenges. In principle, these guidelines should remain unaltered for at least three years.
We have also been successful in presenting more focused, simpler and results-oriented guidelines that concentrate on a limited number of major priorities and set out clearly the results we are aiming for. The focus on results rather than process means more emphasis on the use of targets and indicators to benchmark progress.
We have received considerable support from Parliament in this respect. Whilst we could have gone further, I welcome the fact that a reasonable number of well-focused targets remain. Emphasis on results also demands that more importance is placed on the recommendations to the Member States.
In streamlining the employment guidelines and the broad economic policy guidelines it is also important to recall the advantages of this new streamlining of the employment policy coordination and the broad economic policy guidelines. We have to make sure that the simultaneous timetable for the two sets of guidelines fosters complementarity and creates a more coherent policy coordination at European level."@en1
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