Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-07-Speech-2-464"
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"Mr President, honourable Members, I feel there is time pressure, so will try to be relatively concise. I would like to make a few points concerning the procedure, and also the substantial parts of these discussions, because this is a key discussion for the present and the future of the European Union.
A few more bullet points, owing to time pressure. We cannot promise maintenance of employment in every single sector, such as the coal industry which was mentioned. The Commission appreciates the importance of maintaining jobs in declining industries. We have extended the possibility of government subsidies to the coal industry for the next few years, but not endlessly.
We have to prepare for change and we have to prioritise the shift towards green jobs in the future. That is why we are working on green jobs in order to facilitate this transition, and in order better to anticipate what jobs will accompany this inevitable structural change in the economy and to help people prepare better for a different structure in terms of energy production, energy use, the construction industry, automotive industry, agriculture and so on and so forth.
I fully agree with what was said in terms of child poverty. We have just coordinated with the Belgian and Hungarian Presidencies that one would initiate a recommendation and the other would complete the work on a new recommendation on child poverty, which will be in full coordination with our work for the European platform.
I also agree that we have to look beyond the narrow set of instruments – the toolkit of employment policies – when aiming high to increase employment rates and going for full employment eventually. It is not only about working on skills, although skill development is central. We have to participate in the broader macro-economic discussions – in the discussion on exit strategies for example – and we have to make sure that a premature exit from supportive measures would not endanger the recovery and a return to job creation in Europe.
However, I would refrain from any kind of overtures in this context that would call into question the structure of the economic and monetary union and the newly-established structures of economic governance, because the lesson has to be learned. We have to pull together and that also means closer macro-economic coordination. The point is to take into account unemployment, which is one of the great imbalances of the economy, when we try to tackle the overall imbalances under the new structures of economic governance.
The European Social Fund will continue to be a major instrument to boost employment, especially to improve the quality of supply to help unemployed people to return to jobs, new jobs, better and more competitive jobs, and potentially to self-employment. I am in direct contact with the authorities in Wales who have explained to me with great satisfaction on how the ESF is working in Wales. I would like to maintain the ESF within the cohesion framework, but it is also true that, given the challenges of unemployment and poverty, we have to give the ESF better visibility. I would like to see a greater role, and greater involvement of Parliament in designing the future of the Social Fund and as concerns, for example, a new regulation for the future.
I am sure we can work on this together very well. I could comment on many other issues, but time is very short and I have had bilateral committee-level meetings and discussions with many of those now present.
Finally, I would like to thank the Belgian Presidency for the cooperation we have had with the deputy prime minister and with all the others responsible for employment issues and social affairs in the Belgian Government.
Indeed, we had a rush in the spring period, and it is well known that the Commission came to office itself with a delay because of the delayed ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in many countries. Some documents had to be produced to short deadlines, including, eminently, Europe 2020. This also affected the timetable for the employment guidelines, and rapid work had to be done on economic governance.
However, the challenges justified this rush, and I appreciate that in these challenges, we had good cooperation with the rapporteur and with Parliament in general. Now I, too, have to answer in a rush, but I have a few very substantial points.
First of all, a few comments drew a comparison with the Lisbon Agenda. We have much more structured objectives and a much better proposal for governance of the strategy, and that gives us hope that success will be guaranteed, as opposed to the Lisbon strategy which was only partially successful. Some criticism is justified, but it is not true that up to 2008 and the financial crisis, the Lisbon strategy was totally unsuccessful.
Some further issues: with the employment guidelines, we intend to boost both the quantity and the quality of jobs. The quantity has a numerical target in Europe 2020 as well and, in my view, this is an ambitious target given the fact that we are now at a low point and unemployment is very high and we are in a jobless recovery. It is not coming. It is here.
Unfortunately, there are only very few Member States where the number of employed people is increasing at this moment, but the good news is that Germany is one of them. With job growth in Germany, we now have hope that this could be sustained and will spread through other countries. The fact that now we have a better trend at the centre of the European economy highlights the importance of cohesion.
I would be the last one to deny the importance of cohesion policy, but would like to say that, if I needed to connect cohesion with the integrated guidelines, then I would have preferred to put it into the economic guidelines as opposed to the employment guidelines, because there are disparities within Europe, but there are much bigger disparities in terms of economic performance between the core and the periphery than in terms of unemployment rates.
However, I am happy, as ever, to work with you on issues of cohesion and its connection with employment policies. We have the ambitious target of 75% but I would like to make a correction which is that the 75% does not apply to every sub-group individually. For example, the implication is not that women also would have a 75% average. That is a figure we gave for men and women combined. That is important when Member States come to develop their own programmes for employment and to connect to the flagship initiative in the coming months.
We have ambitious work on subgroups like youth, and I would just like to draw your attention to the fact that next week, we launch the Youth on the Move flagship initiative. This is again something which is an inherent and strong part of our overall work on employment. If you look at the content of the Youth on the Move document, you will see that it is 50% education and 50% employment, because the Commission understands the importance of the employment challenges for young people in Europe."@en1
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