Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-14-Speech-3-295"
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"en.20070214.22.3-295"2
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"Mr President, the report I have prepared on the employment guidelines is extremely short and has been accepted unanimously by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. It is really about how we are to deal with next year’s employment guidelines and integrated guidelines, for our current guidelines are to remain unchanged this year, but next year we shall see a more radical review. Just as Commissioner Almunia said, we therefore anticipate being able to devote a little more time to the issue, and we need more time in Parliament too. That is something I really wish to emphasise, for there is a difference between the employment and the economic guidelines. The employment guidelines cannot be adopted by the Council until Parliament has made its position known. Constructive cooperation between the institutions is therefore required before next year. We made things easier in the run-up to this year. We did so last year too, when no great review took place. Next year’s review is to be a major one, so we are expecting cooperation extending over several months. We have, in actual fact, already had a discussion in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs between the coordinators and myself about not delaying in appointing a rapporteur to prepare the work before next year’s changes.
I wish, for all that, nonetheless to say something about the situation, even if it is only addressed in the justification. Things are genuinely going better for Europe. Employment trends are more encouraging than they were a few years ago. Unemployment is declining. We have sound growth. We must not forget, however, that there are still deficiencies which we must concentrate on remedying. I am thinking of young people who leave school early and young people who become unemployed immediately their education is finished. We know that, if they remain outside the labour market for a long time, it becomes incredibly difficult to get them back into it again. I am thinking of the still considerable differences between the situations of men and women in the labour market. I am thinking of people who have come to us from other parts of the world and who, even today, have problems entering the labour market due to the shortcomings of our integration policy. I am thinking of people with disabilities, who are also excluded from the labour market.
I attended the informal Council of Ministers meeting involving the employment ministers, a meeting that addressed another aspect of employment, namely that we want jobs that are actually better. It is true that we have more jobs, but we want higher-quality jobs too. What, then, is meant by ‘better jobs’? The fact is, we mean jobs that offer living wages and jobs that entail professional development and offer the further training that is so necessary if people are to be able to cope successfully in the labour market. We are also concerned here with good working environments and with giving employees the opportunity to exercise influence, both individually and through their trade unions.
The current trend towards more jobs does not always mean better jobs. That is a state of affairs of which we are aware, and there are debates about it in quite a few countries, for example in Germany, which I visited recently. I also know from my own country that a proportion of the new jobs are what are known as atypical and do not always provide a living wage or opportunities for further training. The influence that people in these jobs are able to exercise is also fairly minimal. We must, then, also concentrate on creating not only more jobs but also high-quality jobs. Europe will never be able to compete in the world market by creating low-wage jobs and jobs that do not enable people to provide for themselves. Instead, it will only be able to compete by creating high-quality jobs that offer, for example, further training and the opportunity to exercise influence.
This is a subject to which we intend to return next year when we carry out the more thorough review of employment trends, looking at more and better jobs and at groups that at present still have difficulty entering the labour market."@en1
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