Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-22-Speech-4-037"
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"en.20040422.2.4-037"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I shall begin by congratulating the rapporteurs, Mrs Hermange and Mrs Randzio-Plath, but shall confine myself to commenting on Mrs Hermange’s report. Although the recent reforms of the employment guidelines were a positive step, it now seems clear that the European Union will not achieve the Lisbon goals set for 2010.
The employment rate at the moment is 64%; achieving 70% by 2010 would entail creating 22 million jobs in the new 25-Member European Union. Only through the development of competitiveness and growth potential will Europe achieve this rise in employment and productivity. The 2004 Spring Summit therefore drew up employment recommendations with the aim of highlighting priority areas for action by each Member State and underlining the need to strengthen the exchange of good practice and experience, which have a fundamental role in European employment strategy.
I support Marie-Thérèse Hermange’s excellent report, which highlights the need to make more effective use of all available instruments, the effort to implement what has already been agreed and the mobilisation of all the players involved. My country, for instance, Portugal, is well on the way to meeting the Lisbon employment objectives, even though it has recently seen its unemployment rate go up, mainly because certain multinationals have pulled out. Even so, the unemployment rate is below the Community average.
As for the objectives of promoting the employment of women and older workers, Portugal has exceeded them. Let us not evade the issues, however: the economic environment we have in Europe today is very different from the one that formed the backdrop to the Lisbon Summit in 2000. The economic and financial situation in certain Member States demands tough policies to curb public spending and, most of all, structural reforms as a precondition for economic growth and job creation.
Those Member States that remain courageous enough during this economic slowdown not to give in to easy solutions and undertake the necessary reforms of employment legislation, social security schemes, and so on, deserve not reprimands but encouragement and incentives for their ability to reform. I am certain that without structural reforms Europe will not achieve the levels of growth needed to implement the Lisbon objectives."@en1
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