Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-183"
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"en.20030408.5.2-183"2
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".
Mr President, I shall start with the question put by Mrs Figueiredo, who linked the increase in unemployment in Portugal with the stability pact. I think that the analysis of the labour market in Portugal and the recommendations for this country make interesting reading. You can see that there is a very serious productivity problem, which has to do with investment in human resources, with large numbers of students dropping out of school and with a very large number of people who have not attended secondary school. The lack of qualifications, the lack of manpower with special skills impacts on the field of small and medium-sized enterprises and the field of innovation and high technology.
If you go further, you will see that there is a particular problem in the field of women where, although there is a high proportion of women in work compared with other countries, if you analyse the female labour market, you will see that it is centred entirely around very low paid jobs and part-time jobs, again due to lack of skills among women. Therefore, the policies which need to be applied and on which the Portuguese Government has, of course, made a great deal of progress, relate to structural changes which have to do with manpower. Of course, no one believes that it is just a question of structural changes, rather than of the overall development of a country, but we cannot ignore these important policies.
On the second question raised by Mr Bouwman, I believe that the very close cooperation we had since November at all stages of processing the proposals prepared the parliamentary committee in question, so that it was able to give an adequate response in an efficient manner within this short space of time. We shall try next year to make full use of the margins available within the framework of synchronisation, so that Parliament can play an active part.
On the question of older workers and how they can stay in the labour market, early retirement schemes have been used by companies in Europe as a restructuring tool for a great many years. In both the public and private sectors, every major restructuring has been linked with privileges or a pension scheme at a very young age for workers. As a result, we have a large number of relatively young pensioners, who are under 55 years of age, and of course it has to be said that this has reached its limit.
Today, the economic situation is such, especially in the pension systems in both the public and private sectors, that it would find it very hard to tolerate this sort of solution. Therefore, first of all, early retirement cannot be seen as a solution either for companies or for workers, who retire at an active age and find it hard not to be involved in economic life, given that there has been a considerable rise in life expectancy. Of course, we cannot talk about abolishing early retirement schemes, unless this is accompanied by a decision with policies to keep these people in the labour market. In this respect, the guidelines we are proposing also contain policies and specific targets for training, for investing in these people so that they can make a career change, for supporting them so that they can break into the field of small and medium-sized enterprises and set up their own businesses; policies which will keep them active. I repeat that, in the 22 quantitative targets you will see in the texts, there are targets relating to workers over 55 and, of course, one of these targets was agreed last year at the Barcelona Council.
What exactly are we proposing on the question of investment in human resources? Within the ten priorities we refer to, there is the question of lifelong learning and a proposal for a quantitative target for each country's investment in lifelong learning in relation to total labour costs. We must say that, at the moment, the numbers in Europe are very, very small. 2.4% of labour costs is being invested in workers in the private sector; there are guidelines and specific targets for the education system and there is the target of 80% of the population to have undergone training equivalent to secondary education by 2010, so that they can stay in the job market and so that they are employable. And I think that, if these quantitative targets are ultimately accepted at national level, it will be an important political strength for the national governments."@en1
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